


wait for the stars to fall

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Season 2, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 68,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21565243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: In a world where the dead walk among the living and the only known healer is trapped in a glowing pod, the Human Squad and what's left of the Pod Squad have to work together to get over their shared past trauma and try to save their future, whatever comes first.If only everything was as easy as trying to bring Max Evans back to life.orThe S2 fic nobody asked for but that I have been announcing for months now.
Relationships: Jenna Cameron/Kyle Valenti, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Max Evans/Liz Ortecho, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 82
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally here! I can't believe I'm posting this at long last, after so many months of working on it, of despairing about it, of losing sleep and changing my mind about what to do with it. I even decided to abandon this project, and without the infinite support and hand-holding of these amazing ladies [Hannah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow), [EssCee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsidiousIntent) and [Meagn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans), I wouldn't be here posting this today. Thanks as well to [Jassi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vggin) and [lostin_space](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostin_space) for their never-ending faith in me and in what I can do.
> 
> This wouldn't have been what it is today without the everlasting help of [brightloveee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee) and her unparalleled beta skills. I asked for a beta over at tumblr and I found an amazing person who I am honored to call my friend.
> 
> I am writing several chapters ahead. Currently planning and aiming for 13 chapters, but who knows. Currently aiming to post once a week, but that could change due to IRL issues.

> As Marilyn Manson once said, _everything I was afraid of when I was growing up, Iʼve become. Iʼve taken on my nightmares, like the devil and the end of the world, and Iʼve become those things._ Maybe I should have listened to Max when he ordered us around. Maybe I should have talked to Isobel even more when we were teenagers. Maybe I shouldnʼt have let hope get the best of me. This is my life now, a never ending crash landing Iʼm not able to avoid anymore. I was afraid of being too human, and in fighting my humanity Iʼve lost so much. Now itʼs time to get it back, for real, second by second.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The glowing in his hand isnʼt fading, but heʼs not making progress by applying pressure and heat to the marred skin underneath his fingertips. He has to try harder, he has to find a way to make it work. He has the feeling that this is a turning point, a make-or-break kind of situation. He _knows_ he has to succeed.

Heʼs afraid of what might happen if he just _doesnʼt_.

Max groans, the force of his own willpower grounding him as he keeps on channeling the strength from the storm into the flesh thatʼs beginning to get warm under his touch. He bites his lip, closes his eyes for a second to find his balance. And there it is, crystal clear and brighter than the sun, in the middle of his conscience, waving happily.

Liz encourages him to go on, and itʼs Liz who heʼs going to disappoint if he doesnʼt manage to bring Rosa Ortecho back.

Heʼs already saved one of the Ortecho sisters before, he reminds himself. He can do this, even if it means attempting salvation for a ten-year-old corpse they found out-of-the-blue while digging into Noahʼs history. And as fucked up and exhausting the task at hand may seem, Max knows he has to get through with it. Heʼs never going to forgive himself if he gives up now.

His strength falters, he shudders forwards. It feels as if heʼs missed a step while walking, but heʼs just kneeling on the filthy ground, beside a glowing pod where Rosa has been kept for the past decade. His stomach churns at the mere _thought_ of the times Noahʼs been to this very cave, to talk to her and swear endless adoration to her, while he dragged Isobel through a life of shadows and lies.

Max shakes his head, his hand never leaving Rosaʼs bare chest. The motion feels intimate, but not as it felt when Liz asked him to leave a mark on her skin – not like heʼs leaving a part of his immortal soul behind her closed eyelids. Rosaʼs not Liz, he repeats to himself, but he has to save her nonetheless.

After everything their mistakes have led to, this is the least he can do. Max wails, his inner force surging forward as he replays the few memories he has of Rosa, just like he did when he was trying to keep Liz from dying at the hands of Wyatt Long. He mutters to himself that this is the correct thing to do, to right the wrongs of three terrified teenagers when they were too trapped in fear and too high on pain to think properly.

His hand is itching where it touches Rosaʼs skin, but his fingers are still glowing and the heat is still bearable, so Max keeps pushing forward. Maybe if he just makes one last effort, maybe if he focuses harder on the memories – the last time he saw Rosa alive, she told him to stay away from her sister. That he did, he let Liz fade away to the back of his mind, a dormant memory that blazed alive so suddenly a decade later that it had thrown him backwards. It felt like heʼd stepped into a rollercoaster with no safety belt.

He allows that feeling to bleed into his motions, and cries out, a wordless sound that rips his insides and tears him in half, an open wound seeping and pounding and beating. His hand feels on fire; his whole being is begging to crawl out of his skin and blend with the soil under his knees.

Rosa gulps for air and chokes on her own haste to breathe.

Max stumbles back when he realizes her eyes are open, staring into his with the full youth of her nineteen years, beautiful and deep like her sisterʼs. He marvels in the resemblance, dark hair and chocolate eyes, olive skin and the trademark Ortecho moles. He lands on his back with a thud, his bones unable to hold him up straight anymore, his heart relinquishing its beating.

Max feels the air leaving his lungs, but heʼs suddenly too tired to breathe in again. His brain seems to have forgotten the basics of surviving, shutting down every cell in his system, and heʼs drowning in the open air, fighting to comprehend the consequences of what heʼs done.

Rosaʼs hovering over him, her voice muffled by the cotton surrounding his ears. He canʼt hear what sheʼs saying, canʼt really feel how sheʼs shaking him. Maybe sheʼs bellowing at him to get up and out of the cave. He wishes he could muster up the strength to move, but his legs have long given up on any motion, and his arms weigh a ton. Even his eyelids are too heavy to move, and he canʼt close his eyes for a much-needed rest. He barely reads Rosaʼs lips as sheʼs mouthing _donʼt close your eyes, Evans, look at me_ , and maybe sheʼs screaming but he canʼt hear anything. 

Max just wants to sleep for a while. A nap sounds like the best option after the night heʼs had – heʼs killed Noah and gotten rid of the threat to Isobelʼs sanity, to their own lives, heʼs healed Michaelʼs hand as payment for having endured so many hells to keep them safe and sound, heʼs finally felt what itʼs like to be fully, truly, deeply loved by Liz.

A rest sounds like the best idea heʼs ever had, and heʼs accomplished so much already that he feels he deserves it. Just five minutes, a quarter-hour tops, he promises himself. Even if he canʼt close his eyes, maybe he can block out the light somehow. Rosa keeps trying to move him to no avail. He doesnʼt need to budge at all. He can just drift away for a second on this hard ground, rocks beneath his skull, arms spread open wide like a cross.

He wants to chuckle. This may be the end of all men with healing hands – a limbo of boneless fear and exhaustion, waiting for their fate to be met with shame and forgiveness. He wishes he could tell Liz to take care of Rosa. He wishes he could be there for their reunion, to watch the gleam on Lizʼs eyes as she hugs her long-lost sister and promises to never let go.

His own sister shows up in his mind, but Max is too exhausted to answer her call. Isobelʼs trying to reach out to him, to keep him from lying down in the dark heʼs now craving. He tries to dismiss her with a curt wave of his head in his mind, but he has no strength left. Then thereʼs Michael, although heʼs more of a presence in the back of his mind than a voice tugging at his soul, beckoning him to _move_. Max canʼt bend to whatever his siblings are asking of him, with words or with feelings. He just wants a short break. Maybe he could try to sit up and follow Isobelʼs command for once in his life, take Rosa to a safe place, and then he could close his eyes and sleep twenty-four hours straight. 

But heʼs so tired. He canʼt keep his grasp on his own consciousness any longer. He lets go, and everything turns to dust around him as he allows the night to finally embrace him.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Slightly shaky fingers lift to her lips as Maria turns her back on the makeshift stage and the man playing guitar. She feels giddy inside, fuzzy and warm, as though the sun has risen in her soul. She wants to scream, she wants to cry, she wants to tap-dance and sing. She wants to climb on the rooftops and make sure everyone in Roswell is aware that she is, for once, happy.

Michael Guerin has come back to her, to the Wild Pony while it was still closed to anyone but her best customer. He kissed her with a fierceness sheʼd almost forgotten, buried in the guilt that came with the knowledge that sheʼd hurt her best friend when sheʼd slept with Guerin in the desert in Texas. She still feels guilty when she thinks of Alex, of his eyes full of hope and regret, of his tight smile and his curt _okay_ that truly meant _I wish Iʼd told you before_ and _please donʼt do that again_ and _I canʼt ask you not to fall for him_. But Guerin is here with her, playing a calm tune on her old guitar. Heʼs come to her and heʼs kissed her like sheʼs the last drop of sanity in his crazed world.

Michael Guerin has chosen her.

Maria knows she wonʼt be able to focus on counting back the bills as she had been doing when he stepped into the bar, asking whether it was open, when what he really wanted to know was if there was any chance for them not to be broken and bruised. She felt the distress oozing from every one of his pores, the guilt building up behind the gold in his eyes, and she wanted to kiss his worries away, to be the one to make him forget about whatever hardships he might have gone through. She wants to be his port in a storm. She wants so badly to become the beacon in his night that sheʼs flung herself to him without thinking about the consequences that just a kiss on those lips would have.

But Michael chose her, and she cannot deny her own feelings. Surely they caught her like a deer in headlights, but she canʼt fight them anymore – she could cry, she could kick the floor and swear sheʼd rather have Alex by her side than break his heart over a guy, but what she feels for Guerin has struck her harder than expected. The blow to her heart felt like a freight train colliding against a paper wall. She canʼt ignore whatʼs crystal clear – sheʼs chosen a guy over a lifelong friendship, and sheʼll have to own up to it someday.

Just not today.

Today she wants to revel in the fact that, for once in her life, someone has actively sought her and attempted to make her feel wanted and deserving. Today she wants to _be_ the kind of girl who gets all the attention. Today she wants to stop being the best friend, the third wheel. Today she wants to stop being invisible and rise up to become herself.

The music vibrates louder, calling to her. She smiles softly while she turns around in her stool, one hand resting on top of the bar for better balance, searching for grounding. She still wants to pinch herself to make sure she isnʼt dreaming. Sheʼs faced with a soothing sight when she lays eyes on the man playing guitar.

Michael is hunched over the instrument, humming softly as he strums the strings with a soft caress. She isnʼt sure why heʼs now willingly playing guitar when up until a few days before, Michael hadnʼt been able to grasp anything with his left hand without it cramping. She distinctly remembers his discouraged face when Arizona proved to be a fraud. Her eyes dart to his fingers, expecting them to be a mangled mess of flesh and bone.

As he stops playing and flexes his hand underneath the guitarʼs neck, Maria has to choke down a gasp.

There is no visible injury in those fingers, the back of Michaelʼs hand smooth skin against the wooden surface. Heʼs looking down at his fingers with a glint of awe in his eyes, and Maria fights the urge to stand up and shake him for answers. Sheʼs not ready for whatever explanation he has to offer, but she knows she wonʼt be at ease until she finds out. She remains silently looking at those fingers until he glances up with a pained look in his eyes. 

“How?” she blurts, gesturing to his hand in hopes heʼll understand her broken attempt at asking.

For a second it seems like he doesnʼt know what sheʼs talking about, but then he trembles, a shiver up his spine that leaves him shaking under her prying eyes. He doesnʼt say anything, he doesnʼt even budge for a second. And then, as if someone cut the strings holding him up, Michael slumps out of the chair, crumpling to the floor, guitar falling beside him.

She yelps, running to his side. When she reaches him, his eyes are open but blank, _lifeless_. She shakes him, ushering him to wake up and come back to her, because she canʼt believe sheʼs finally found herself someone to love that loves her back, only to lose him to some sort of stroke, on the filthy floor of the Wild Pony, at an odd hour on a Monday.

Her fingers brush his uninjured ones, the touch sending a jolt of electricity through her. She jumps slightly, grabbing at her necklace for protection against whatever is holding Michael hostage in his own skin. When the feeling of the familiar weight against her chest comforts her enough to stop the shaking, she furrows her brow and decides to try and move him to the back office, where she has a couch and more privacy than in the bar where anyone could enter unannounced – very much like Michael just did, what seems like a lifetime ago although it’s only been a matter of minutes

Maria groans as she tries to haul his weight on her shoulders, only to drop him back to the floor. 

“Donʼt you dare die on me, Guerin,” she mutters under her breath, closing her hands around his wrists and dragging his body across the floor to the back exit where her office is. Sheʼs sweating when she reaches the knob, but sheʼs managed to move Michael without him suffering any further injuries than a bump on his forehead from where he met the ground face-first after collapsing.

Only when sheʼs got him half-propped up against the couch, running out of the strength to lift him up on the furniture, does she check that he is, in fact, not waking up, passed out with his eyes wide open. Only then does she allow herself to crumble down.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The frame cracks with a crying noise before tipping off the mantle and falling to the ground. Isobel smirks, satisfaction present in her features as she grips the arm of her sofa with slender fingers. She can do this – she has already proved that there is more to her, to _them_ , than they initially thought. There is a busted frame to prove it next to the one sheʼs now moving around.

Isobel squints her eyes, focusing again on the picture now lying on the floor, glass broken across their smiling faces, reminding her of the way that Noah always managed to make her laugh. She closes her eyes briefly, unwanted memories flooding her as she loses her control over her powers. 

She remembers the first time she saw him, tall and tan and so attractive that Isobelʼs breath hitched in her throat. Noah always was a gentleman – opening doors for her, insisting on walking her home, buying flowers just because the lilies reminded him of that one day they both got lost in the municipal gardens, and he took her along on a romantic stroll – that she just know realizes was all feigned on his part. Isobel remembers too the last time she saw him, dead on the filthy soil outside the turquoise mines, an electric tree blooming from his chest and spreading through his arms. 

“Focus,” she chides herself when the frame doesnʼt budge. She feels her control slipping away, so she fumbles to gain some semblance of power as she grabs the sofa tighter. Thereʼs a trickle of blood rolling down from her nose; she tastes salt and iron when she licks away the dense liquid, tears and blood mixing together in a river that doesnʼt seem to stop flowing. 

The frame finally flies up from the floor, trembling under the force of Isobelʼs focus, her gaze never leaving the picture. She isnʼt using her hands as support, sheʼs just moving a small object with her brain. Isobel allows it to fly across the room and through the open window to the patio, where it crashes. 

“I have to tell Michael,” she says out loud. She canʼt wait until she tells both her brothers that sheʼs able to levitate stuff. Maybe she can even make her hands glow like Maxʼs, teach herself to heal and repair. 

Maybe if the three of them join in with their newly-discovered healing powers, they can try to bring back Rosa Ortecho. Noah has hinted that they all are powerful enough on their own, and Isobel has just proved that he was right somehow. Under other circumstances, she wouldnʼt have hesitated in giving Noah credit for his good ideas – it sickens her to think about how much power she willingly gave him, apart from the things he took from her without anyone noticing. Without anyone really being able to stop him. 

“I have to reach them,” she mutters to herself, standing up. She tries to tap into her connection with Max, but it feels feeble and hazy. Isobel frowns; she knows Max must be exhausted after the events of last night. Sheʼs sure itʼs too much even for her goody-two-shoes of a brother – killing his own brother-in-law when all Max had ever done with his gift was heal Michael’s occasional drunk-fighting injuries and revive Liz Ortecho when Wyatt Long shot up the diner. The drifter in the desert from when they were all fourteen is conveniently buried deep in her memories; she doesnʼt want anything to trigger her into another blackout state.

They still donʼt know if there are more aliens like Noah – thirsty for power and wild with abandonment. She canʼt risk it any more than she already has.

She taps the connection again, already feeling dizzy. Max isnʼt replying, but through their link she can sense a revolting feeling, as if her brother is drunk on power and high on force. Isobel blinks twice, trying to identify the feelings rushing into her – trying to distinguish if theyʼre hers or Maxʼs, or even Michaelʼs, given the sudden thirst for acetone and whiskey sheʼs having. 

Sheʼs overwhelmed when she reaches the mantle where the frame had been on display, slender fingers grabbing the thin fabric with a shaking she canʼt control. Suddenly the noise in her head, the rumble thatʼs ever-present since Michael got back to Roswell the year they all turned eleven, is gone – replaced by a cold that seeps down her spine until it squeezes around the core of her connection with Max. A link that now is trembling. Isobel surges forward with her mind in an attempt to keep Max from going silent as well, but the connection is severed abruptly, leaving a gaping hole in her soul. Isobel feels adrift, fighting for the air thatʼs now scarce and stale, suffocating her from the inside. 

It feels as though Max is gone. Isobel doesnʼt think it can be possible, because _how could he_ , but the pain of a line shred to pieces, raw and messy around the edges, is enough to send her in a spiral of grief and anger. 

“Max!” she cries out. She needs balance, something to lean against until she catches her breath, until the lightning and the thunder roll out of her in the same waves that are now pinning her to the ground. “What have you done?” 

She projects that thought once and again, reaching out to Max to no avail. Isobel switches her aim but Michael is also unavailable, blocking her unconsciously with a symphony of tunes and quiet. Sheʼs all alone, on her own for the first time since hatching out of her pod. 

Sheʼs terrified. 

Her vision blurs. Her strength dissolves in a fit of splutters and a well of despair, as she falls to the ground, not fully unconscious but not totally aware.The rest of the decorations above the mantle tumble down to the floor, surrounding her like an ex-voto for a deity. She fights for support just as much as she fights for air, not managing to keep any of them as she stumbles and stutters, breath hitching until it catches in her throat, threatening to suffocate her. Her body hits the ground as her mind crashes against a black, invisible wall.

Her hair sprawled like a halo around her head, her arms upturned at unnatural angles, Isobel closes her eyes for the briefest second to gather the courage to prod at the connection once again. 

Just one second, she tells herself before fading away.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Rosa isnʼt sure what happened. She feels disoriented, trapped in a circle of headache and dizziness, as Liz wraps herself around Max Evansʼ limp body in an embrace thatʼs made of tears and wails. Rosa is trying hard not to flinch every time Liz cries out, fist bumping against Maxʼs chest, spluttering expletives and shaking his unmoving frame. 

“No se va a mover,” Rosa finally says, stepping forward, placing a hand on Lizʼs trembling shoulder. “Let him go, Liz. Se ha ido.”

“You canʼt know for sure,” Liz replies stubbornly. “He has to – heʼs just – Max, wake up!” she sobs, curling herself against his body, tear stricken. “Please wake up.”

Determination courses through her. Rosa surges forward and disentangles the two of them, pulling at Liz until she is pressed against her instead of Max. She pets Liz’s long, dark hair, trying to reconcile her last image of a teenage little sister with the grown up woman whoʼs crying not-so-silently with her head buried in the blanket that covers Rosa. 

“Everythingʼs going to be fine,” she coos. “I promise, Liz. Tranquila, estoy aquí.”

Eventually, Liz calms down, her breathing evening a bit as she fights to control her emotions. Rosa is still caressing her back, fingers running lightly up and down from the base of Lizʼs neck to halfway down her spine, soothing touches when she knows words wonʼt bring them the peace that they’re both craving. When she feels her sisterʼs heart rate has slowed down enough to allow Liz to breathe properly without the risk of choking on her own tears, Rosa dares to speak up again. 

“Iʼm sorry,” she begins, favoring English over the Spanish that comes easily to her tongue when sheʼs feeling lost. “I just woke up and he was there, unmoving. I couldnʼt make him open his eyes.”

“Itʼs not your fault,” Liz shakes her head, sniffing a little. Thereʼs snot in her nose, just like when they were kids; Rosa has to keep her hand from reaching out to clean Lizʼs face. This is clearly not her usual scene – not when her younger sister looks like sheʼs aged a decade overnight. Liz turns again to Max, freeing herself from Rosaʼs grip and shaking Max slightly. 

“Idiota,” Lizʼs hand keeps colliding against Maxʼs chest, over and over, and the sound of flesh on fabric is grating Rosaʼs nerves. “¡Idiota! You had to go and be all hero, didnʼt you?” Rosa tries to keep her from damaging what sheʼs sure is Maxʼs corpse. The man – and wasnʼt he a child just yesterday when she shoved him out of the Crashdown parking lot? – isnʼt moving and isnʼt breathing either, if the lack of heaving from his chest is any telling.

“Liz,” she tries again, but her sister is already leaning over Max, covering him with her long black hair and her tears, checking, feeling, shaking. Rosa sighs; never, in her nineteen years of experience, has she ever had to face such a situation. She might have had to shoulder their mother leaving, she may have had to hide the fact that sheʼs not Arturoʼs daughter – only by blood, because heʼs her _papi_ no matter what – but sheʼs never had to comfort her sister when sheʼs mourning over the loss of someone who, apparently, she holds quite close to her heart. 

“Liz, let go. We have to call the police, or an ambulance, or someone. Let go and let me –” she fishes for her phone, belatedly realizing that sheʼs only wearing the blanket sheʼs woken up to. “Here, give me your phone and Iʼll call –”

“No!” Liz bellows, grabbing Maxʼs body tighter against her own chest. “No police, no hospitals, nothing. We need to call Isobel, we need to call Mikey.”

“Wait now, what?” Rosa blinks in stupor for a second before collecting herself, grasping the edges of the blanket before rising to her feet. “What do you mean? Call Isobel _Evans_? ¿Estás loca? Whoʼs Mikey?” Liz stops her thrashing, going so completely still Rosa fears sheʼll collapse any time. “Liz?”

“Thereʼs so much I have to tell you,” Liz whispers, still not letting go of Max as she finally, _finally_ , moves to fish her phone out of her purse, forgotten on the ground by their side. She mutters under her breath some Spanish Rosa doesnʼt catch, so low and slurred that sheʼs sure Liz is just talking gibberish and not an actual language. Liz lifts the phone to her ear in a swift movement, cursing gruffly when no one picks up. “Cʼmon, Iz, pick up, pick up, _pick up_ , dammit!”

“Liz,” Rosa gets on her feet and walks around the cave until sheʼs standing opposite to Liz, at the other side of Max whoʼs still fully unmoving on the filthy floor. “Look at me, hermanita. We need to call an ambulance, maybe they can still do something for him. But we have to do it _now_. Youʼre in shock, itʼs normal. Lemme help you.”

“No!” Liz cries out again, punching a number onto the screen of a phone Rosaʼs sure her sister didnʼt have yesterday. In fact, Rosa isn’t sure there had been those fancy touch screens on phones yesterday; where’s Liz flip phone she just gave to her as a graduation gift? “No hospitals, no ambulances, no doctors, Iʼve told you, Rosa. So much to tell you, but I canʼt right now.” She holds her index finger up while the phone rings feebly before a metallic voice announces the voicemail. “Dammit, Michael, pick up your fucking phone for once!” She tries again, still not looking up from Max, a sharp rictus on her features as the line goes silent after the voicemail message. “Michael, call me back as soon as you get this message. Itʼs important. Itʼs Max.”

Liz sighs deeply as she hangs up, staring at her screen as she shakes her head. Rosa is speechless, she isnʼt understanding anything that’s been happening ever since she woke up with the worst headache in ages – ever since Jasmineʼs birthday party and the weird mix of alcohol and pills and joints and that blue liquid that tasted like shit but gave her the highest high of her life – but she can feel Lizʼs distress. Her aura is all jumbled in black and gray and blue and purple, Rosa can feel it. There are tons of questions fighting their way up her throat, choking her in their haste to be asked.

“Why donʼt you want to call an ambulance?” she settles for saying, the most pressing issue at hand addressed the first. 

“I canʼt let them get to Max,” Liz replies simply. “Soon as they find out, theyʼll want to experiment on him, dissect him. Theyʼll kill him.” There are tears sliding down her cheeks again, an unsure finger tracing up and down a pattern on Maxʼs shirt. Rosaʼs lost among her sisterʼs words, which she doesnʼt understand, and the reality theyʼre facing, where theyʼre sitting by a corpse talking instead of acting.

“But, Liz,” Rosa begins, fidgeting because she doesnʼt know how to say that Max is already dead without sounding like an insensitive bitch. “Liz, heʼs already –”

“He had to save you,” Liz sobs quietly. “He had to go and be the alien Jesus he claimed he couldnʼt be. Why, Max?”

“Alien Jesus?”

“Ya te lo he dicho, thereʼs so much –”

“– that I donʼt know,” Rosa finishes Lizʼs line. “Why donʼt you stop saying that and start actually telling me? Because sure as hell yesterday when I went to bed you werenʼt looking so grown up, and Max Evans didnʼt even know what a beard was, and you werenʼt on speaking terms with Isobel Evans and that Michael guy I donʼt know anything about!”

Liz looks up for a second, something undefined crossing her features as she makes a decision. 

“I guess it was just yesterday for you, wasnʼt it? When you went to meet up with Isobel Evans and Jasmine Frederick and Kate Long at the turquoise mines?”

Rosa has a sinking feeling creeping up in the pit of her stomach. Somethingʼs utterly wrong in the way Liz is saying her words. She can only nod.

“Rosa,” Liz says softly, fully turning in order to face her and looking straight into Rosaʼs eyes. “Youʼve been gone, as well. We didnʼt know there was a way to bring you back, until Max... Well, Max obviously has found a way.”

“Bring me back?” Rosa doesnʼt like the sound of that. Itʼs as if Liz means that Rosa was some place else different from this dimension, but she canʼt surely mean _that_.

“Thereʼs no way to say this gently,” Liz mutters. She squares her shoulders and shakes her head, going in for the plunge. “Itʼs currently 2018. Youʼve lost over ten years, Rosa.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Kyle Valenti has always prided himself on living by the family code. Even in his darkest hours, when he thought nothing was worth his efforts anymore and heʼd wanted to give up so badly his bones had ached with the _need_ to let go, the Valenti Code had gotten him through his pain until heʼd reached higher grounds. He isnʼt sure the code applies to his current situation, watching over a slowly shutting-down body in the middle of a secret bunker used as an operation center to hunt aliens. 

Kyle shakes his head. 

“I took an oath to do no harm,” he mutters. 

Jesse Manes is still lying on the floor where he fell after Kyle injected him with his best mix of barbiturates. 

Heʼs found out that life can change at the drop of a hat. He once was the Homecoming King at Roswell High and then he became the freshman no one would ever look at twice at the UNM. He got through tending to shooting victims without knowing if he was healing the shooter. He lost his father to a brain tumor heʼs only recently discovered was caused by an extraterrestrial force. Heʼs been tracked, pursued, and shot, and heʼs survived.

Tears well up in his eyes when he realizes that heʼs lost so much more in these past months than just some weight and the memories of a father who was always the best person he knew.

Heʼs lost his father three times, he realizes. Once when the tumor that took his brain erased all semblance of sanity, next on the day he died, leaving Kyle and his mother devastated in his wake, and the third time when he found out that Jim Valenti hadnʼt been the respectable Sheriff heʼd led everyone to believe. Kyle isnʼt sure how he feels about his dad anymore. He really doesnʼt know how he feels about any of his childhood heroes anymore. Heʼd always looked up to his dad and Jesse Manes – police and military, set out to serve and protect. In their own twisted way, Kyle thinks they believed they were doing the right thing. In fact, he _knows_ Jesse Manes still believes it – _the end justifies the means_ – but itʼs harder for Kyle to ignore the means when heʼs been shot, bulletproof vest aside. And now heʼs stuck in this goddamn bunker with a hole in his shirt and the promise that things are just going to turn even more hellish in a couple of hours. At least now he knows heʼs not alone, even if in the very beginning he hadnʼt wanted to draw Alex into this.

“You sure as hell werenʼt thinking with your brain, Valenti,” he admonishes to himself as he looks up from the desk heʼs currently sitting at. Calling Alex and telling him over the phone that they now had a situation at the bunker had been the easiest and fastest way to get him to come over to the base. Not telling him that the situation involved his father had _definitely_ not been the wisest move. Alex had tripped on Jesseʼs body upon entering the bunker in his haste to save Kyle from whatever trouble heʼd gotten himself into – they were both still reeling from the prison and the explosion, and they didnʼt really know the extent of Flintʼs influence. Alex had _tripped_ , falling face-first onto the floor right next to his father, and Kyle hadnʼt helped the laugh bubbling up inside of him at the absurdity of everything that had happened to him in less than a day.

After a beat, Alex had joined him in the laughter as Kyle had helped him onto his feet and away from his father. 

“I donʼt know whatʼs happened here,” Alex had said, brushing off the dust from his jeans. “I donʼt think I want to know.”

“So I wonʼt tell you,” Kyle had promised, right before sighing and wiping a hand over his face. “But itʼd be better if you knew.”

“I _know_ ,” Alex had groaned, taking a seat at the very same desk Kyle had been sitting when heʼd entered the bunker. “I just – I thought he was in Niger for real.”

“Well, surprise?” Kyle had joked. When Alex had shot him one of his trademark glares, heʼd sobered up almost instantly. “I thought someone was following me, okay? I know it sounds insane, and I know it makes me look like Iʼm losing my shit, but I swear I thought _he_ was following me, so I decided to, you know, stay safe and I went to this place to buy a gun and-”

“You what?”

“Yeah, donʼt judge me, man!” Kyle had sighed. “I bought a bulletproof vest, though. Turns out, I wasnʼt wrong and that was the best purchase of my life.”

He had kept on explaining what had happened after Jesse Manes had fired at him; Alex had remained eerily silent through the whole tale, just sending the occasional glance down at his father. Afterwards, heʼd just stood up, told Kyle to not touch Jesse, and had begun pacing the hall with his hands stuck in his pockets, the taptap of his prosthetic against the floor the only sound cutting through the silence. After what had seemed like hours, Alex had checked his wristwatch and sighed. 

“If heʼs back in town, it means my power over him isnʼt as strong as I thought it was,” heʼd huffed. “We need to think about our next move. But I have something to do before we can get to that part,” heʼd added. “Iʼll be back soon enough. Just keep me posted and when I come back weʼll think about what to do.”

“And what am I supposed to do, stay put here while you go do what? Save the world or what?” Kyle had scoffed, reaching out and grabbing Alex by his wrist, effectively stopping him from moving further towards the door. 

“Yeah,” Alex had replied slowly, wriggling his way out of Kyleʼs grasp. ”I need you to stay here and check on _him_ to make sure he doesnʼt wake up before we have a good plan. I wasnʼt expecting him to be back too soon, and now I have some loose ends I need to tie up.”

“Guerin?” Kyle had asked stupidly, earning himself another glare from Alex.

“Iʼm not sure that the bullet hasnʼt affected your brain, Valenti,” Alex had said slowly. “Of course I need to go talk to Guerin, and his _siblings_ , because my father back in town after Caulfield blowing up can only mean that they are in danger. I need to make sure theyʼre alert just in case, while we fix this.”

Kyle can swear, in hindsight, that there were tears rimming Alexʼs eyes before heʼd turned around and walked out the door, closing the gate after him with a loud bang. 

And now Kyleʼs still waiting on him to come back. He’s lost track of time, down in a bunker where everything seems to happen in slow motion. Heʼs already texted him twice to let him know there havenʼt been any changes in their current situation, and he hasnʼt received any in response until his phone beeps loudly, echo reverberating in the silent hall. He picks it, fingers tapping on the metallic table as he opens the message app and reads the content. He pales, eyes widening in surprise and fear as he allows the words to sink in.

He fumbles to get on his feet as he searches the contact list on his phone, finding the one heʼs looking for, and hoping against hope that Jenna Cameron will pick up the phone.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The sun is high in the sky when Alex checks his watch for the upteenth time. Heʼs been waiting for a couple of hours now, finally getting some warmth in his bones under the maroon sweater and the black leather jacket that heʼs chosen to go meet Guerin. He should be sleeping; he should be gathering data with Kyle; he should be looking for a better way to get his father out of the picture. 

He shouldnʼt be sitting on a lawn chair at a lonely junkyard, waiting for a future he doesnʼt even know exists anymore. 

His phone pings. Alex takes it out from an impossibly tight pocket and unlocks the screen with a sweep of his thumb. Itʼs a message from Kyle. He dismisses it with a shrug; Kyle knows not to contact him unless itʼs a matter of imminent death. A quick text to let him know about the state of the burden they both now have to bear doesnʼt qualify. At least not yet. 

Heʼs had quite a night. When theyʼd left Guerin at the mines after Caulfield, Alex had known something would inevitably go wrong. As if the rest of the day hadnʼt been stressful enough – learning about more aliens being alive and in captivity had been topped with the knowledge that his own brother Flint had been behind it all, following their fatherʼs orders. And then. 

Then Michael – _Guerin_ – chose to stay with _them_ , to die with them, and Alex had seen his whole life played out in front of him, a future hampered by the absence of one vital part of himself. He had needed to do something, as reckless and suicidal as it had been; Alex had had to make a decision that, given any other circumstance, he would never have made. For the first time in his whole life, with the sole exception of a kiss and a moment shared in the shed, Alex Manes had bared his soul and told his truth. Afterwards, heʼd walked away to lick at his wounds like he always does, not sparing a single thought to Michaelʼs state as theyʼd dropped him by the place it all began.

Alex closes his eyes as his mind supplies him with images from the storm that swept away all his mistakes and replaced them with new, fresh sins to commit. 

Itʼs beginning to be obvious that, although they didnʼt really set a time for their talk, Michael Guerin isnʼt going to show up.

His phone beeps again, insistently. He checks it again, surprised to see Lizʼs name glaring at him from the screen. “Liz?” he questions as he picks up, too stunned to think properly. “Whatʼs going on?”

“Alex, gracias a Dios. No one elseʼs picking up their damn phones!” she sounds distressed, voice clogged and tight. For a second he feels as though heʼs talking to Rosa, her voice reminiscent of the old days, sending him through a spiral of memories. “Where are you? We need help!”

“Whatʼs wrong, Liz?” he asks carefully, rising to his feet as he speaks. He has to find his balance on his prosthetic after having spent so many hours sitting on that uncomfortable chair. “You sound –”

“Not Liz,” she says. Alex drops back into the chair, rakes a hand through his short hair. “I know this is going to be such a –”

“Rosa,” he breathes out. If someone had told him, a couple of months ago, that heʼd ever have the chance to talk to his best friendʼs dead sister, he would have had that person committed. “How on Earth – Whereʼs Liz? Is she with you?” As an afterthought, too shocked to be fully functioning, he questions, “Rosa, whereʼs Max?”

“See, thatʼs the thing –”

“Rosa,” he warns, standing up again and talking a few careful steps towards his car. “Where are you? Whereʼs Max? I know he has to be there with you. Pass me to him.”

“Itʼs Max,” her voice cracks, and itʼs all Alex can do before leaping into his Humvee and sprint all the way to wherever they are. He has better control than last night, however, so he just walks as fast as he can towards the vehicle, standing under the sun a couple of feet outside Sandersʼ sign. “He – Alex, Iʼm not sure heʼs breathing.”

Alex can hear the distinctive sound of someone crying, and rustling, as if Rosaʼs kneeling. 

“Rosa, tell me where you are. We can fix this, I promise, but I need you to tell me where you are. Please,” he adds slowly, hoping to get through what sounds like a serious panic attack. Heʼs clearly successful when he hears sniffing and a soft _okay_ at the other side of the line.

“Weʼre at – this seems like a cave, I donʼt know exactly where – wait, maybe Liz –”

“The turquoise mines?” he chokes out. He knows about the cave and the pods, heʼs talked about them with Liz when the whole Isobel debacle, even if he hadnʼt dared to talk straight forward to Michael. 

“No,” Liz takes over the phone. Even without being able to see her, Alex can tell sheʼs shaking. “Alex,” she croaks out. “Max, he – he –”

“I know, Liz,” he speaks softly, climbing into the cabin of the Humvee with the phone pressed tightly against his ear. He starts the car with one hand, the engine roaring to life with a grunt. “I need to know if youʼre at the turquoise mines.”

“Not exactly,” she exhales, her voice distant all of a sudden, and Alex recognizes the background sounds. Heʼs been put on speaker. “I donʼt know, Alex. I donʼt really know.”

He makes up his mind so quickly it leaves him dizzy. “Keep your phone on, okay?” he commands. “Iʼm going to try and track you down.”

“You can do that?” comes Rosaʼs voice, unsure and so young. Alex refrains from punching the wheel as he too puts the call on speaker. He doesnʼt reply. “Alex?”

Thereʼs a bag below the passenger seat. He reaches out to grab it, muttering to himself when his prosthetic gets caught in the dangling straps when he lifts it up. “Fuck it,” he says. “Iʼm here, I promise. Just – just stay where you are. Try to be calm. I know itʼs not – Iʼll be there in no time.”

He hears the soft click of the call ending, but he doesnʼt know if hanging up has been conscious on the girlsʼ part, or just a glitch in the line. He doesnʼt care, really, as he takes his laptop from the bag and opens the lid. His fingerprint is enough to get it working, and he taps a few codes into one of the programs already running, the coordinates bright in the middle of the screen.

“There you are,” he mutters through his teeth, frowning at the spot in the middle of the desert, thirty miles too far from anything remotely resembling urbanized. When heʼs about to maneuver to get the hell out of Roswell and into the desert, he remembers something and picks his phone from where it has fallen onto the passenger seat, next to the laptop now spewing directions.

He types a quick text to Kyle, _smth wrong in the desert. gonna check out. keep an eye on burden. call for reinforce. will come back soon. kyp_ , before fixing his eyes on the road and starting his way down the lane outside Sandersʼ. His phone buzzes, but he doesnʼt look at it, deciding that Kyleʼs reply can wait until he gets to the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, where Max Evans has decided to play hero.

He hasnʼt made it through the outskirts of the town when his phone blares again. Heʼs ready to throw the device outside the window, he wants to yell and kick and flounder. He wants to crawl under a rock and forget the last ten years happened. 

“What the hell,” he cries out as he pulls aside, ready to murder. He canʼt lose any more time, but the phone keeps ringing. Whoever it is, it has to be important. As he steps on the brakes too forcefully, the cell flies from the seat to the floor, bouncing on the lower front of the dashboard and landing halfway below the seat. He huffs. 

“Isnʼt it enough to find out your family runs a secret facility to torture aliens, or to discover the fucking love of your life is actually an alien, or to almost die in a supposedly abandoned prison? No, surely it isnʼt enough.” He bends down to reach for the phone, grazing it with his fingertips. He groans. “No, it isnʼt,” he mumbles as he fumbles to get the phone from where itʼs seemingly stuck, still ringing a headache into his skull. “Apart from having to deal with a father who tried to kill my best friend from high school, now it seems Max Evans has decided to play god, and who the hell is calling me at this goddamn hour?”

He finally manages to grab the phone with one last push. He straightens up, the device secured in his grasp, as he looks down at the screen, lit up with a picture of Maria and Liz smiling up at him, taken one of the last days heʼd gone to the Pony before everything spiraled out of control. He frowns. 

“Why would Maria call me _now_?” he muses. He picks up the call with quivering fingers, fearing that his best friend – his alleged _sister_ – bears more bad news. 

“Hey, Maria, now’s not the best time – Maria?” he asks in a surprised voice, brows furrowing even deeper as he tries to understand the ragged words among the sobs coming from the other side of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter starts with an off-voice, very much the same as the show itself. This chapter is Michael's voice, in case you hadn't noticed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am completely _overwhelmed_ by the great reception the first chapter had. Thank you very much to all of you who left a comment, gave kudos, reblogged and liked on tumblr, or simply read and enjoyed it. It means the world to me.
> 
> I have just now realized that I didn't warn you beforehand: everything Spanish you read has its own translation into English. You just have to hover over the word or the sentence, and it will show up. I don't want anyone to stop reading or to be taken out of the story because of Spanish, but it's going to show up several more times during this story!
> 
> Thanks once again to [brightloveee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee) for her endless support and her hard work on beta'ing this. I own nothing but my mistakes, and there will surely be a lot.

> All my life I have been scared of who I am, of _what_ we all are. Tales donʼt end in happy endings for the guy with the healing hands, history has never been kind to every little thing humans donʼt understand. When I was younger, I read every book on religion I could get my hands on, and thereʼs this line from the Bible, Matthew 2:2, that says _we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him_ , that has always sounded familiar, warm, to me. It also raises so many questions, because whoʼs to say Michael, Isobel and I didnʼt come straight from a star somewhere up in the skies?

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He is floating. Objectively Max knows he canʼt, because even aliens arenʼt equipped to fly, although Noahʼs words about how they have only scratched the surface of their powers haunt him.

But he is floating. 

The darkness around him only deepens as Max dives into it, boneless and bodiless, sure that he has died and turned into a meteorite tracing trails in the night sky. He remembers the pain and the glowing hands, the stretch of his skin as he ran himself ragged overusing his powers. Max remembers Rosaʼs despairing eyes, her words urging him not to give up, and he also remembers his inability to close his eyes. 

His floating comes to a halt abruptly, as though he has hit a wall. Physically he feels like heʼs been run over by Michaelʼs truck and a Police cruiser taking turns; he understands that it has to be a side effect of resurrecting a girl who had been dead for ten years. Max reaches out in front of him, the darkness preventing him from seeing anything, but there’s nothing keeping him from moving. He doesnʼt know whatʼs going on, whether he is still alive or dead or in the limbo he was told about when he was a kid growing up in all too religious Roswell. He blinks, to no avail – the darkness remains firmly in place. He sighs. 

Thereʼs the familiar push in his mind, a swirling whirlwind in pinks and oranges that heʼs come to associate to Isobel. Max wants to dismiss her, waving her off in his mind, trying to pull back and push forward into the darkness, a call in the silence that surrounds him. Isobelʼs reaching out to him, and soon enough he feels the distinctive whites and purples coming through from Michaelʼs mind. 

_No_ , he projects in his mind. _Go back. Itʼs too late._

He feels Isobel fighting him back, Michael calling for him to stop being such a stubborn martyr. Max doesnʼt listen to them, the darkness seeping through his bones. 

_When have you ever listened to us?_ Michael questions rhetorically, but Max ignores his words and takes a step forward. The darkness still calls to him, but his feet donʼt push past the invisible barrier.

 _Wait!_ Isobel cries out in his mind, the psychic connection vibrating with her efforts to keep him in place, strong enough to actually fight against his own mind. Heʼs too tired to fight back, but he really wants to move forward. He meant what he said in the cave, right after killing Noah, right before healing Michaelʼs hand the way heʼd wanted for ten years. They canʼt live in the past anymore. They need to embrace who they are, what they are, so they can learn about themselves and become more powerful. Max isnʼt sure how much of that thought is his and how much is Noahʼs projection that he absorbed after striking lightning through his brother-in-law. 

The darkness shifts, becoming lighter as Max can see his surroundings. He is standing in the middle of the New Mexico desert, dust in swirls around him as the sun bathes him. He blinks at the sudden disappearance of the dark space heʼs been in for what has felt like eons. He sighs when, turning around, he can see Isobel and Michael there with him. Max realizes then that he isnʼt in his own headspace anymore; Isobel has taken over and sheʼs trying to keep him in place for as long as her powers will allow. 

“Max,” she says softly, taking a step his way. He lifts one finger in front of his face, and Isobel stops. By her side, Michael is frowning silently. “What have you done, Max?" she sighs. 

“What I should have done ten years ago,” Max replies truthfully. “If I had known that Rosa–” he trails off, gesturing vaguely before himself, hands drawing circles as he shrugs. 

“You resurrected her,” Michael accuses him. He looks like heʼs been sucker punched, eyes swimming in their sockets wildly, remnants of dried blood on his collar, left hand smooth and healed. Complete. 

“Yes,” Max confesses. “Itʼs what I should have done,” he repeats.

“You fucking idiot,” Michael growls, but his voice doesnʼt rise above a monotone whisper. Max wonder briefly how much strength Isobel is putting out there to keep Michael from lunging forward. “You always have to be the goddamn hero. Did you even think of the consequences?”

“Where were you going?" Isobel asks, fulminating Michael with a glance so cold that it would have frozen hell, Max notices. He is glad not to be on the receiving end of his sisterʼs wrath, until Isobel looks back at him. “You were surrounded by darkness.” 

“I donʼt know. I think Iʼm–”

“–dead,” she finishes his sentence, choking on the word when he couldnʼt pronounce it. “I can feel it. _We_ can feel it,” she adds. By her side, Max can see Michael trembling, hands balling up in fists, clenching and unclenching spasmodically. “You have to come back,” she pleads. 

Max shakes his head. He canʼt speak, not now, not when the darkness is already whispering his name at his back. Michael squints his eyes at him; Isobelʼs lower lip quivers as she wobbles. “Iʼm sorry,” he says. “I meant it. We need to move forward. This is forward for me.” 

Drops start to rain from the cloudless sky as Isobelʼs eyes well up with unshed tears. “You promised we would move forward together!”

“You said to be normal,” Michael finally intervenes, stepping up and closing the space between them. “You dying after bringing back a dead girl is not normal.”

“Come back,” Isobel begs. Max notices sheʼs wearing her wedding band still, as though in this mindscape she hasnʼt yet got over the loss in her own life. Itʼs been less than twenty-four hours, but Max feels like his whole existence has passed by in that span of time. “Itʼs not too late. I have been able to reach you. I can bring you back, Max. Take my hand,” she adds, stretching fingers towards him. “Please, Max.” 

But the darkness calls to him, Max can feel it. Itʼs a sirenʼs call, the same he suddenly can recall from the moment they were pushed out of the pods and into an unwelcoming world. He turns around to face a wormhole beginning to form, turning and twisting black against the bright colors of the desert Isobel has created for him. Max closes his eyes, looking for his balance. When Isobel and Michael run up to him in a futile attempt to stop him, he projects a protective field around himself, pushing them back, stopping them from touching him. He can hear Isobelʼs strangled yelp; sheʼs usually in charge in this situation – no one can lie to her, no one can act against what she wants, except for Noah. Max is channeling some of Noahʼs energy, and he uses it to push against Isobel and Michael. 

“Max!” Michael yells, but Max is facing the wormhole, a small vortex opening in front of him. “Donʼt!” Thereʼs panic in his voice. 

Max shrugs, the motion throwing both his siblings stumbling backwards. He dares a glance over his shoulder to see Isobelʼs eyes glistening with tears, Michael brimming with anger. “I love you both,” he says. “But I have to do this. I have to move forward now that I can. You should do the same.” 

“Max!” 

He ignores their pleas, pushing down the grief Michael is throwing his way and the pain Isobel is projecting. He takes a step forward, and then another, until he is fully entering the wormhole and the darkness engulfs him.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Pick up, Kyle, for Godʼs sake,” Alex mutters under his breath as he drives madly throughout the desert, phone on speaker mode, dust creating patterns behind the car. “Pick up the damned phone!”

“Alex?” comes a voice through the static, and Alex sighs in relief. “Whatʼs wrong? First that text and now–”

“I need you to go to the Wild Pony,” Alex instructs, cutting Kyle off before he loses more precious minutes. If what heʼs gathered from both his conversations with Maria and Rosa – his heart still stops beating at the mere _thought_ – then they are already running out of time. “Help Maria out, sheʼs in some situation and I canʼt–”

“I canʼt leave the bunker,” Kyle protests. “Need I remind you of the _burden_ you and I have talked about? I canʼt up and leave here to go help DeLuca with whatever she needs to fix at her bar.”

“Itʼs _Michael_!” Alex all but bellows onto the speaker, head tilted to a side to keep his eyes on the road as he directs his voice towards the device on the passenger seat. The map on his laptop screen shows the pin far away from the main road, so he steers off the pavement and into the desert. The car runs into a few bumps before he can control the wheel again. “Somethingʼs wrong with him!”

“Werenʼt you going to meet up with him? Whatʼs he doing with Maria?”

“Sometimes you can be so fucking dumb, Valenti,” Alex spits out as he surmounts a crest and his eyes land on Lizʼs SUV parked askew in the middle of nowhere. “Iʼm in a bit of a situation myself, Liz needs me. And I need you to help Maria and Michael. Whatever it is, you needed to be there like, half an hour ago.”

“And what about–”

“I donʼt care about the burden right now, Kyle,” Alex says, deflated, as he stomps on the brakes of his own car next to Lizʼs. 

“I havenʼt been able to contact Cam,” he hears on the other end, Kyle sounding as exhausted as Alex is feeling. “Whatʼs going on, Alex?”

“Youʼll understand when you get to the Pony,” Alex rubs a hand over his face. “I have to hang up now, Kyle. Wonʼt be reachable for some time, donʼt know how long. Keep trying to find Cam, we need as many hands with this as we can get.”

“That big?” Kyle doesnʼt ask anything else, just makes a noise that could be a groan or a growl, the static over the line making it difficult for Alex to distinguish over the rushing in his own ears. “Be careful, Alex,” he finally says. “I donʼt want to have to rescue you wherever you are now.”

“Same,” Alex replies before killing the connection and resting his forehead against the steering wheel for a second. His day has become increasingly stressful by the second – the call from Lizʼs phone and talking to a newly-resurrected Rosa has been surpassed by Mariaʼs own call crying that Michael Guerin of all people had collapsed on the floor of the Wild Pony of all places after playing the guitar of all instruments after a decade being unable to even hold it with his left hand. 

He sighs as he opens the door of the car, the windy heat of the desert hitting him, sneaking up his nostrils. His left leg takes all his weight as he slowly gets out of the vehicle, so many hours of sitting and waiting having taken their toll on his stump. The leather jacket forgotten on the seat, he closes the door and makes his way through the dry rambla to the point his device is telling him that Lizʼs phone is. He rolls up the sleeves of his maroon sweater and talks himself into entering what looks like a cave when he reaches an uneven patch of ground, sliding a bit and almost landing on his ass in the middle of the desert. 

“Liz?” he calls out before setting foot inside. He needs the reassurance that heʼs going to find what heʼs come here looking for. When she doesnʼt reply, Alex reaches for his weapon instinctively, only to come up empty handed when his fingers brush past his belt. He isnʼt wearing his holster today, because he thought – silly of him – that he wouldnʼt need a firearm to talk to Michael.

 _This is Roswell,_ he admonishes himself. _And there are aliens and a government conspiracy to wipe them from Earth. What were you expecting?_

“Liz,” he calls out again, stepping in between the rocks that form an entrance to a cave thatʼs hidden from view. There are voices coming out from the inside, Alex recognizes Lizʼs broken and despaired and Rosaʼs – he would have never thought heʼd hear her voice again. “Liz, itʼs Alex.”

He doesnʼt want to acknowledge the fact that he spoke to Rosa Ortecho on the phone barely twenty-seven minutes ago, because as crazy as growing up in Roswell has been – as crazy as having been involved with aliens his whole life – Alex canʼt wrap his head around the fact that the dead can still be walking the Earth ten years after their dismissal. Still, he walks into the cave, ready for a fight if necessary. What he sees, though, takes his breath and his balance away for a brief second.

There is a sparkling-white, oval-shaped, egg-like structure that partly illuminates the space. Alex stares at it minutely, curious as to whether it’s one of the pods Michael told him about, barely hours before, but now it feels like a lifetime has passed between this moment and the morning when Michael confessed his darkest secret. Alex wants to touch the shimmering surface thatʼs calling to him, but a wail at his feet distracts him enough to tear his gaze away from the pod and towards the sound.

In the middle of the cave, poorly lit with candles, lies Max Evans, his chest being pounded by a silhouette backlit against the rocks. His eyes are wide open, as though heʼs staring at the ceiling during one of his pensive phases Alex remembers from high school, when Max would zone out whenever Liz was around. One of his arms is outstretched at a weird angle, and his face holds the stillness of centuries of death. Alex has seen enough corpses throughout his decade of service in the American military to recognize one when he sees it. 

Thereʼs nothing he can do to help Max Evans.

He stares at his body, spread-eagle on the floor, until a thought heʼs been trying to push down surfaces with enough force to knock him out of breath.

According to Maria, Michael dropped dead in the middle of the Wild Pony without warning. Alex is sure that if he asks about the time when Max has passed away he might get a time frame compatible with when Michael was rendered unconscious. Which means he has to find Isobel Evans right away. And pray that whatever affliction thatʼs taken Max doesnʼt spread through their shared mindscape too fast for him to save the other aliens.

He doesnʼt realize heʼs staring until Rosa clears her throat and he blinks. The form pounding on Maxʼs chest morphs into a sobbing Liz, crashing her fists once and again, sputtering in Spanish as though no one can understand her – _venga, vamos, Max, despierta_ – long black hair brushing Maxʼs arm with every movement, and Alex knows that, had Max been a tad more alive than he is right now, Max would have been ticklish all around from the soft caress of stray locks against his skin.

“Liz,” he whispers, taking a small, unsure step towards his friend. The ground isnʼt as even as heʼd like it to be, and heʼs got to be careful if he doesnʼt want to end up in the hospital with a broken prosthetic leg and a grumpy military doctor. “Liz, Iʼm here.”

“Thank God,” says another voice – the one Alex wasnʼt expecting over the phone – and suddenly the situation becomes almost unbearable as Alex turns to his left and takes in the sight of Rosa, standing tall next to her sister, hands tangled together in a nervous heap while a blanket with rich native American decorations wraps her frame. “I was beginning to think you wouldnʼt come.”

“Rosa,” he manages to say through the haze that seems to have taken charge of his mind. “Itʼs really you.”

“Of course itʼs me,” Rosa retaliates, picking the end of the blanket and wrapping it tighter around herself. “I donʼt know whatʼs happened, Alex, I donʼt really understand, but one moment I wasnʼt and now I–”

“Oh my God,” he half mutters, half chokes out. “Youʼre alive.”

“And Max is dead,” Rosa states, softly but loud enough that Lizʼs ears catch upon it, if the way she perks up is any indication.

“Heʼs not _dead_!” she protests without turning around. “He _canʼt_ be!”

Rosa shoots a look at Alex that clearly means that she thinks her sisterʼs lost her mind. How Alex has missed these interactions, these moments when he could communicate with Rosa without any words needed – just a glance, a smirk, in their own little world. But time has passed, heʼs grown up and escaped one hell to enter another, and now heʼs facing the dead body of Deputy Evans and a very much alive Rosa Ortecho.

He feels like heʼs seventeen again, afraid and doubtful and worried that his life is running out of his control.

“Liz, if heʼs brought Rosa back,” he starts, circling his friend like he would a wounded animal, too scared to startle her into bolting, but also wanting to make sure she pries away from Max. 

“Rosa is very much brought back, you jerk,” Rosa herself interrupts him, clearly offended by being addressed as if she’s not there.

“If heʼs done that,” Alex continues.“And it seems he has, thereʼs no way back. Have you checked his vitals?” When Liz nods, Alex sighs. “Heʼs dead, Liz.”

“We can still help him!” she cries out, finally turning around to look at Alex. “What are you doing here?” Liz blinks at him as if sheʼs just realized heʼs there. Alex decides that he could probably blame it on the shock of watching Max Evans dead on the floor.

“Rosa called me,” he explains simply. “Liz, I know youʼve grown close to Max, but thereʼs nothing we can do. He was the healer and–”

“Wait,” Liz cuts him. She stands up but doesnʼt budge from Maxʼs side. “First, I _love_ Max. As in, Iʼm _in love_ with him. But,” she frowns at him before daring a glance at her sister, whoʼs conveniently staring at the embroidery in her blanket. “But you know Max is a healer. How do you know about _that_?”

“Donʼt you think we have more pressing matters in our hands right now?” Rosa pipes up, pushing off the wall sheʼs leaned into while Liz went on a rant about how much she loves Max Evans. “I donʼt think itʼs important right now to know how Alex–”

“It is,” Liz states. Her voice grows firmer and steadier as she gazes Alex up and down. “Because heʼs military, and heʼs a Manes, and he was with Mikey for some time when we were still in high school.” Suddenly she seems to realize, as Alex lifts an eyebrow elegantly at her. “Mikey told you. Right.”

“Iʼm not sure I like your implications that I’m military,” he says, brows furrowed once again. He doesnʼt correct her on the assumption that what tied him to Michael was a brief thing from long ago. “But my point is still valid. Max isnʼt breathing. Not even Kyle could save him.”

“Wait, Kyle _Valenti_?”

“Yeah, Rosa, Kyle Valenti,” Alex snaps at her. He doesnʼt have time to explain anything, he has more pressing matters on his hands, and he needs to go find Michael and Isobel. “Liz, how about we move Max to my car and go from there? This situation might have affected Isobel and Michael too,” he settles on, in the hopes that her inclination to help others might finally kick in and shake her out of this nightmare.

“Yes,” she agrees readily. “Letʼs move Max to a proper pod, and then we can go find Michael and Isobel. Maybe theyʼll need the pods as well.”

“Thatʼs not what–” Alex cuts himself off when he sees the way Liz is looking up at him, hopefully. “Why do you want to move him to a pod when thereʼs one right here?” 

“Noah said it was defective,” Liz explains. “Thereʼs a lot you still donʼt know, Alex. But Noah? Heʼs dead. He killed so many people. He killed–”

“–Rosa,” Alex finishes. The folders heʼs been perusing with Kyle and Cam come rushing to his mind, all the information theyʼve gathered and the fake autopsies signed under a fake name. “My father knew about it. God, we need to rush, Liz. We need to move _now_.”

“What do you mean–”

“Not now. Iʼll explain later,” Alex huffs as he steps forward and grabs Maxʼs arm, pulling at him. With what seems like unhuman effort, he lifts him and places all the weight on his left shoulder. “Cʼmon, help me. Weʼll move faster.”

Between the three of them they manage to move Max into Alexʼs car, while Liz babbles about how the pods keep the aliens in stasis – as though Alex doesnʼt already know from his conversation with Michael – and how they need to get Max into one with as much silver goo covering him as they can gather. With Max secured in the back seat alongside Rosa, whoʼs fidgeting away from him, Alex turns to Liz, sitting in the passenger seat, and asks the only question heʼs yet to get an answer for. “Why are you so sure Max isnʼt completely dead, Liz?”

He can see as her eyes well up again, darting back to Maxʼs unmoving form, and a sad smile creeps up her face. She pulls down her jacket from her left shoulder, leaving it dangling awkwardly from the other, as a glowing handprint peeks out from underneath the stripes of both her top and her bra. Alex watches it mesmerized, not fully understanding what heʼs looking at until she speaks again. 

“This handprint is a psychic connection,” she explains. “I can feel what he feels. I can feel echoes of past sensations, memories of past times, but also what he feels right now. If heʼs scared, or angry, or thirsty,” her smile falters. “He doesnʼt feel dead, Alex. He isnʼt feeling _alive_ to me either, but he definitely isnʼt dead. Iʼd have felt it, just like I felt Noah.” When she realizes sheʼs not making any sense, she sighs. “Trust me, I know what Iʼm feeling. Iʼm scared because heʼs scared, but heʼs also hopeful somehow? And intrigued. Wherever he is, heʼs investigating something. I canʼt bury him, not yet, Alex.”

Alex nods curtly, about to start the engine again, but Liz isnʼt done yet.

“We have to bring him back, just like we brought back Isobel.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The darkness dissipates when he comes through the other side of the wormhole. It takes him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the new lightning, the bright colors an aggressive attack on his pupils. He blinks, hand over his eyes, as something in his soul settles for the first time in almost two decades.

Itʼs said that when humans die, they revisit their lives in the small moment between their last breath and the moment their soul leaves their body. Max wonders whether it might be the same for aliens, if thereʼs a heaven where people like him could go in the afterlife. Heʼs always been a religious kind of guy, but this doesnʼt sound nor feel like heaven to him; at least not the way heaven is painted in the books heʼs read. 

Max knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is back home.

How could he believe that Earth was his home, when he was missing out on the amazing vibrancy of this world where rivulets of purple just entwine with trails of pink, forming structures he can brush with his fingertips?

He takes in what his eyes are registering: a cluster of buildings suspended in thin air, sentient beings skidding through the empty spaces, a sky white and blue and yellow, a ground pink and red and green. He feels like he canʼt breathe, for all the beauty that surrounds him all of a sudden. He wants to _touch_ – heʼs dying to feel the way those surfaces spread smoothly under his glowing hands. Max breathes in, exhales, and gulps in the air that feels so different yet almost the same as it does on Earth. Itʼs somehow thicker, but breathable, and he revels in the feeling of what heʼs seeing before his mind registers the change in the scenery.

The buildings shift and turn, as if heʼs watching a movie, the skies closing off in stormy weather, and then the people – those sentient beings heʼs seen before – are gathering around one shrine, candlelit and richly ornate. Those beings look like humans, their bodies the right shape and varying heights, but the colors of their hair match the buildings and the atmosphere, and their clothes are nothing similar to those he used to wear on Earth. They make him feel self-conscious; after all, he died with simple jeans and a shirt on. He doesnʼt have enough time to wallow in self pity, because the image is changing, and Max is beginning to believe that heʼs suffering from hallucinations because it feels like heʼs watching a movie, a plot unfolding before his eyes. 

There are three beings holding three bundles of blankets, wrapped tightly around what Max recognizes as babies. He frowns. He doesnʼt know whatʼs going on, but when the beings leave the infants on top of the altar, the rest bow and clap and coo. Thunder resounds and lightning threatens to strike. There is a storm brewing around the scene, and Max is scared for the three little babies deposited helplessly over the surface, exposed to the elements. He has to bite back a yelp when the lightning crosses the painted sky and strikes right through the shrine. The lightning strikes two more times, one for each baby, before vanishing in thin air. Max resists the urge to go check on the babies; no one seems to care about their well-being. He understands when he _feels_ a voice in his mind rather than hear it, saying loudly, “The thunder has spoken, the lightning has struck. These are the chosen ones.” The voice isnʼt speaking in English but Max understands the words nevertheless, a litany of sounds and syllables that feels engraved in the deepest part of his soul. 

The crowd cheers loudly. “Vilandra, Zan and Rath,” the same voice keeps talking, and Max realizes it comes from one of the three beings who had taken the children to the shrine. “They will lead us victoriously in our quest.”

Max frowns, he doesnʼt understand much of what heʼs seeing, but thereʼs a dreadful feeling of belonging whenever he sets his eyes on the bundles on top of the shrine. The image shifts quickly this time, and now heʼs facing a world torn by war and destruction, so similar to the picture Noah painted during his last hours on Earth that Max simply accepts that he is, in fact, on his home planet, whatever its name. He still doesnʼt understand why or how or whatʼs going on, but he can assure himself that heʼs witnessing the downfall of his own civilization.

Heʼs standing in a cave, similar to the one where the pods remain on Earth, shaken by thunder and something Max canʼt put his finger on – something scary. There are three kids and a woman whoʼs hunched over them in a protective stance. The thunder outside relents after a few moments, and the woman stands up once again. One of the children, a boy with hazel eyes and soft curls, clings to the edge of her dress. "Mom,” he projects. Max doesnʼt think heʼll ever get used to that way of communication. 

“Itʼs okay, son,” she coos, petting his curls. “Why donʼt we pick it up where we left it?" She pauses for a second, regarding the girl, barely five, big green eyes locked on the rocky wall behind the womanʼs back. "Vilandra, you have to focus. You hold the power now, and you have to share it.”

“How do I do that?” the girl whimpers, sucking on her thumb. 

“Your brain is your power, Vilandra,” and Max is sure that the woman is trying so hard to remember the name, as though sheʼs about to call her by another all the time. "Think hard, focus on Zan and tell me, which power do you think will suit him better?" 

The girl looks back at the third child, a serious boy with big hands that rings a bell in Maxʼs memory. “Healing,” the girl states. The woman nods, and pushes her gently towards the boys. 

“And Rath?”

“He needs to be able to move things,” Vilandra mutters. “Mom says heʼs the one born to protect us.” 

The woman huffs slightly; Max can tell she doesnʼt like what the girl has said, but she doesnʼt seem to act on it. “Well, then, honey. Focus on them, reach into their minds, and share what you think they need with them. Zan, Rath,” she commands. “Remember what I told you about opening your minds? Now itʼs time for that.” 

Max stares at them as the girl squints her eyes and the boys close theirs. He can feel the surge of power and electricity running through them. The woman smiles sadly when she deems them done. “Now I will teach you how to use them,” she says. “Thereʼs much more to you than primary powers.” 

Max doesnʼt remain in the cave to witness it. Thereʼs a pull in his gut and suddenly heʼs once again outside in the open, under a sky that threatens to split in two halves over his head. The buildings that once were bright and shimmering are now broken and ripped in pieces, the beings – aliens just like him, his people, his _family_ – chased down by ships that fall from the sky in rows of destruction, hunting, killing, obliterating. He finds himself glued to the scenes, unable to speak or to act on what looks like yet another memory, even if he doesnʼt know whose it is, so he just stares and drinks in what heʼs seeing, so he can take it with him wherever he goes next.

Max is taken to a small room where a council of seven adult aliens is gathered, three kids running around seemingly unaware of the war destroying their home outside. One of the adults is projecting her voice to the rest, her blonde locks a river down her back. Max hears her in his mind, just like before when he witnessed the babies being chosen by lightning. “We have to send them away,” sheʼs saying. Some of the others nod slightly, but another brunette female alien shakes her head.

“Thereʼs no point in sending the saviors away. Whoʼs going to help heal the sick, or rebuild our homes, or rule our world?”

“Weʼve been doing it for centuries now, Kedra,” the blonde insists. “Itʼs the only way to ensure we survive.”

“We need them here, Kadja!” Kedra says. “Weʼve been sending them away, and where has that gotten us? Nowhere!” She stands up, her lips never moving as she speaks with her mind. “They have been reincarnating, they have been flown to different worlds across the galaxies, and every time they have been split up, tortured, killed.”

“If they stay here, theyʼll be killed as well!” the one named Kadja exclaims. “I just want them to survive, so our people have a chance to thrive in the future! If we keep them here, hidden and blocked, theyʼll end up finding out. Theyʼll kill them!”

“You seem to forget the twins are my children, Kadja,” comes the icy reply. One hand waves toward the kids, whoʼve stopped their games and are now staring at the adults with bright wide eyes. Max recognizes the features, but he refuses to believe – whatʼs there to believe, anyway? – until the child with chocolate locks lifts a hand that starts glowing red.

“You seem to forget that Mich–Rath is my only son,” Kadja retaliates, only a slight stumble in the way she pronounces the name Max doesnʼt recognize. “Sending him away might as well kill _me_ , but I canʼt think of myself now. I have to think of the greater good.”

“Let the thunder and the lightning speak,” one of the eldest aliens projects then, effectively cutting off the rising argument between the two mothers. “If itʼs decided, then we will send the saviors away, safely tucked in travel pods, to reach a destination unknown to most of us, so if the time comes that weʼre tortured for their whereabouts, we wonʼt have that information to reveal.”

Max waits for the image to change, and surely it does, becoming a spiral of circling colors mashing up, memories and conversations and pictures of an escape in the making, of Kadja and Kedra fighting for control of a sinking ship, of smoke and fear in the air, of callused hands pushing three pods into a cave because the thunder and the lightning had deemed them so important that it was worth sacrificing everyone elseʼs lives.

His spirit drops when he finally realizes what has been under his nose the whole time, but itʼs something he could only notice after having been sent in the right direction by the images heʼs been shown – the memories of a life he doesnʼt remember having. He knows when he sees the face of the little girl, seven years old and blonde as the sun; he knows when he watches the curly haired boy wailing and painting the walls with red; he _knows_ when he recognizes his features on the serious face of the brunette boy holding the weight of the universe on his shoulders.

Thereʼs some truth to the myths heʼd been fed while growing up. In the tales of gods and miracles and water turned wine and men walking on water and healing hands. As he spirals down into the dark void once again, he _knows_.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Enabler, Healer, Protector.

Vilandra, Zan, Rath.

Isobel, Max, Michael.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The moment he hangs up on Alex, Kyle knows thereʼs not an easy way out of the hell heʼs placed himself in. One glance at the floor, where Jesse Manes is sprawled as the life slowly seeps out of him, and Kyle feels like heʼs going to be sick. The weariness is starting to put a dent in his resolve.

With a sigh, he produces the second needle he prepared when he was trying not to fall into madness. He stares at it reverently, as though it holds the secrets of the whole universe, before uncapping it and sticking it in Manesʼ neck once again. 

“Itʼs just a new dose,” he mutters. He stands up without touching the body on the floor. “It will slow down the process, reverting it to the early stages. It wonʼt kill you, but it wonʼt wake you up,” he keeps explaining like heʼd do to any patient come his way to seek for a cure to their pain. He doesnʼt know why he didn’t tell Alex about the second needle, the second plan he had in case things didnʼt turn out right – the liquid heʼd planned to inject in his own veins, a solution if things turned out to be unbearable for him. _Jesse Manes doesnʼt take prisoners_ , he tells himself as he walks out the bunker, phone firmly in his pocket. _Better out than dead_ , he reassures himself.

One day, Kyle will have to tell Alex about his plan to put himself into a coma for the greater good – he isnʼt a trained airman, under duress heʼd have spilled his guts – and about how much he values life that he would willingly go under before being broken. The price heʼs got to pay, the life he has in his hands right now, hanging in the balance of unconsciousness and organ failure, is too high for someone who just wanted to become a surgeon.

When he exits the bunker, heʼs still wearing the bulletproof vest.

The ride to the Wild Pony goes without incident. Kyle makes sure not to run any red lights, not willing to attract any attention to himself as he drives back into town. His fingers keep tapping on his phone, the fading sound of ringing filling the cabin through the speaker of his Bluetooth device. Jenna doesnʼt pick up the phone the first two times, and the third one, just when Kyle is about to enter Roswell, doesnʼt go the way he would have wanted it to. He hangs up, frustrated that heʼs not coming across with his point to the stubborn people heʼs surrounded himself with. But when the Wild Pony shows up in front of him, he promptly focuses on the task at hand – find Maria, help her with Guerin, and maybe, perhaps, be able to understand whatʼs going on.

The bar is closed, according to a sign hanging from the front door, but Kyle knows better. Heʼs aware Maria doesnʼt actually lock the place up if sheʼs already inside, so he strolls confidently to the door and grabs the handle, trying to turn it. The handle doesnʼt budge. Kyle tries again a couple of times, frantically moving it up and down with no success.

He pounds on the door, hoping he doesnʼt look like a needy drunk whoʼs up early to get his fix.

It takes Maria at least ten minutes to rush to the door; not that Kyle is counting. What he is counting, though, is the number of quirky stares he gets from bypassers and tourists on their way to the recently reopened UFO Emporium. Kyle huffs under his breath – he missed the only two town events where he could have bragged about being a surgeon and flirted with all the women he would have wanted to. And now heʼs looking like heʼs up for trouble in the middle of the day. 

"Weʼre closed,” he hears Maria say from the other side of the door. 

"Itʼs Kyle,” he replies. "Alex called me. Said you needed help.” 

The door cracks open slightly. Kyle peeks Mariaʼs face, pale and exhausted. "I guess itʼs good youʼve come. Youʼre a doctor.” She opens the door fully and he steps inside, waiting for her to lead the way. "Michael was doing just fine, you know. And suddenly he dropped, eyes open, and he won’t wake up.” 

Kyle nods, fear increasing. Michael has gone through a lot these past days, from what heʼs been able to gather – Caulfield was a minefield full of his worst nightmares, and the three of them had to watch go up in flames because they tried to help the prisoners. Kyle remembers Michael saying that he could feel the anger and the screams inside the building. He canʼt help but think that maybe the stress of the past few days has finally taken its toll on the alien. “Take me to him.” 

He follows Maria through the bar, to the small cubicle where sheʼs hidden Michael from view. When he sees the alien, he has to fight the urge to covers his mouth with his hand in order to stop a wail from coming out. He takes in the sight – the eyes wide open, the lifeless slump of his body, the left hand dangling off the couch. 

The left hand that looks completely healed, when just the morning before it had been as mangled and broken as the past ten years. 

“Whatʼs going on, Kyle?” Maria demands, voice breaking. 

“What was he doing here?” he asks in response, kneeling in front of the couch and checking vitals. Michael is still alive, but unresponsive. Kyle canʼt know the reasons why he fell unconscious, but he canʼt really take Michael to a hospital. He needs Liz and her biomedical training and her studies on alien physiology to understand. 

“He came here. Asked if he could play. Then–” she trails off. Kyle has the feeling sheʼs keeping some secret but he doesnʼt pry. 

“I need to make some calls,” he tells her. “He’s unresponsive but breathing. It may be related to stress or something similar. Keep him here, and call me if thereʼs any change,” he motions for her to give him her phone and punches his number on it. 

“And thatʼs all?” her face is drenched in tears but her voice only quivers a little. 

“I need my bag and some other things from the hospital. Guerin has an utter fear of doctors and hospitals. We canʼt risk taking him there to wake up surrounded by machines and white lab coats,” he reasons, hoping to sound reassuring. “I will be out less than an hour. I promise Iʼll be back.” 

Maria nods slightly, letting him go through the open doors. Kyle closes the one leading to the front of the bar behind himself and slips into doctor mode once again. He has a mystery on his hands, but he canʼt afford to panic. His mind wanders back again to Michaelʼs words, and a thought occurs to him, a thought thatʼs scary enough to leave him breathless. 

If the three of them are connected, Isobel might be in danger as well. And maybe the source of this illness thatʼs crept upon Michael is in Maxʼs hands. 

Heʼs so engrossed in his thoughts that he doesnʼt notice the ruckus outside the bar until he almost runs into a couple of people shaking in the street. When he looks up, he sees a crowd cutting off the access to the parking lot, some women muttering under their breath, a man comforting a young child. 

Thereʼs a woman wearing a t-shirt that reads _Iʼm a believer_ standing near a big black SUV. “Call the police!” the tourist is screaming, flailing around as her husband kneels between two parked cars in the lot. “Heʼs dead! Heʼs dead!”

When Kyle wades his way through the crowd gathering around, muttering that heʼs a doctor and that he can help somehow, he feels short of breath. Itʼs like heʼs starring in a shit show with increasingly spooky elements, because heʼs sure heʼs staring at Racist Hankʼs dead body, a gleaming handprint blooming in his chest, glowing through the ripped shreds of his torn shirt.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The radio is blasting some Counting Crows song she doesnʼt recognize from the first beats, but Jenna doesnʼt really care as she drives with the sun on her face the last few miles to her next stop, somewhere near Terre Haute. Sheʼs been driving nonstop for some time now, enjoying the solitude of the road in the wee hours of the morning after having slept under six hours at a filthy motel on the outskirts of Loma Linda. Her fingers grip the steering wheel with a force she hasnʼt felt in herself for so long sheʼs almost forgotten sheʼs strong enough to bend reality to her will whenever she needs to move forward.

Adam Duritz is singing in the background of her mind, _they paved paradise and put up a parking lot_ , and she finds herself humming along. As she approaches Terre Haute, the traffic becomes denser and harder to navigate. Her grip on the wheel tightens as she squints her eyes at a car that passes her old truck way over the speed limit. Jenna mutters under her breath, fingertips catching up with the rhythm, when she’s abruptly interrupted by the blaring of her phone, thrown hastily onto the passenger seat when she left the motel this morning in the blaze of the engine and the pedal to the floor.

“Who the hell–” she cuts herself as she dares a glance at the screen, lit with an incoming call. The car sheʼs following in this lane surrounding Terre Haute swerves towards an upcoming exit, making her hit the brakes abruptly to avoid a collision. “Where did you learn to drive?” she yells more to herself in the confines of her car than to be heard by the careless driver whoʼs now navigating happily away. Her phone has gone silent, finally. Sheʼs already fed up with the noise of the newest Panic! At The Disco song sheʼs set up as ringtone. 

When the gas tank indicator points below one third, dangerously nearing the red marking reserve, Jenna scans the road signs and takes one of the exits for a gas station. _Just a few more miles_ , she tells herself as she drives slower. The gas station is almost upon her when she exits the freeway, the black and white stripes of I-44 E shimmering in her rearview mirror.

The music seeping through the speakers is now even more upbeat than before, and she sings along the lyrics, _nothing ever comes without a consequence or cost, tell me will the stars align?_ , as she taps the fingers of her left hand on the plastic cover underneath her window. Her head bobs in time with the sound, her tight ponytail bouncing as Dan Reynolds bleeds out on the lyrics. Right around halfway into the song, her phone rings again insistently, persistent in its quest to ruin any of the good songs this forsaken radio station plays. This time she manages to grab it from the passenger seat, lifting it so she can read the name on the screen. Itʼs lucky that Jenna was already pushing on the brakes as she neared the gas station; otherwise she would have come close to hitting one of the trees that salute drivers from the side of the freeway. She brings the car to a halt next to the gas pumps, but when she aims to swipe her finger over the phone screen the call has already been disconnected.

“Fuck,” she swears under her breath. Her long nails, previously perfectly manicured until she discharged her firearm in a public place to save Max Evans of all people, get in the way as she falters while attempting to unblock the screen. Luckily for her, the phone blares once again, and this time she manages to pick it up in time. “Valenti,” she says, suddenly out of breath. 

“Thank God, Cameron,” comes the reply from the other end. Static muffles the line and she doesnʼt hear whatever heʼs saying.

“Valenti, Iʼm losing you,” Jenna says. “Are you in the clubhouse?”

“Iʼm driving,” Kyle explains. “Iʼm getting into town right now, you should be hearing me just fine.”

“Whatʼs the emergency, Valenti?” Jenna demands, biting her thumbnail as she eyes the gas station trying to decide whether she should buy some chips or wait until sheʼs all settled down in Marysville to go grocery shopping. 

“I donʼt know,” Kyle answers shortly. “I need you to go to the desert. Alex is already there, he hasnʼt told me much but–”

“Hold your horses,” she cuts him off. Her left hand threads through her ponytail, messing it up. She closes her eyes. “Is this related to,” she lowers her voice although sheʼs still inside her car, “the alien manhunt?”

“I guess so. I really donʼt know,” Kyle repeats between huffs, as though heʼs working hard on controlling whatever emotion heʼs bottling up. “I already told you. Alex called for reinforcements, and thatʼs all I know. _We_ need you to go to the desert.”

“Do you ever ask a question, Valenti?” she hisses, opening the door of the car and stepping outside under the scrutinizing gaze of one of the station workers. Her ponytail bounces against her back. “Iʼm not in Roswell. Hell, Valenti, Iʼm not even in New Mexico anymore.”

“What do you mean?” And there it is, Jenna can hear it crystal clear – Kyleʼs voice breaks by the last syllable, and the panic breaks through his words. “Where are you going? Whatʼs going on?”

“Listen, Valenti,” she interrupts him again before he can go on and on with endless questions she doesnʼt want to answer right now. “I donʼt owe you any explanation. Iʼm no longer a Deputy in Roswell, and Iʼm moving to Ohio with my sister. Iʼm not coming back.”

“But–”

“Valenti, this fucked up quest of yours has already cost me my job and my sisterʼs safety,” Jenna snarls. “Iʼm not giving up any more of myself to it, am I being clear?”

“Jenna,” he resorts to first names, but sheʼs having none of it.

“I should have left a note in the clubhouse,” she laments. “ _Leaving town. Donʼt look for me_. Hell, Valenti, tell Manes Iʼm out of it. Whatever it is, look for help somewhere else.”

She hangs up, harsh and angry. She collapses against the side of her car, one hand still holding the phone close to her chest while she splays out the fingers of the other against the cool surface of the vehicle. She tries to focus on her breathing – one in, one out, steady, counting down to three every time she inhales so she can calm her nerves – before she pushes away from the car and to the pump, ready to refill her tank and speed away from Indianapolis so she can reach Ohio on schedule. Sheʼs just shy of three hours from her final destination. She can make it. 

As much as she tries, during the remainder of her road trip to her sister, Jenna canʼt stop thinking about Kyleʼs words, repeating on a loop over the music that the radio host is playing. She isnʼt paying attention anymore, only focused on her breathing and the road as her mind plays tricks on her. She tells herself that both Valenti and Manes could have come across something important that needed her backup, but she also talks herself down from turning around and driving back home because Charlie needs her in Ohio and not in Roswell.

Jenna has let her sister down so many times that she canʼt afford to disappoint her once more. 

Right on time, according to the plan she had built before hitting the road back in New Mexico, she rolls into Ohio and drives easily towards Marysville. She follows the GPS instructions, navigating through the main roads until she finds her way to the military facility where Jesse Manes had managed to transfer her sister. She knows she should check into the hotel room sheʼs booked in advance, in a tiny, family-run hotel near everything but the prison. But Jenna canʼt wait to get her clearance into the building where theyʼre keeping Charlie, so she’s ready to visit her first thing in the morning. It’s well into the afternoon by the time she pulls up to the facility parking lot and kills the engine; she hasnʼt been able to shake Kyleʼs words from her mind, but she has to gather herself if she wants to go through the motions of becoming Charlieʼs only approved visitor.

The military men guarding the entrance eye her shamelessly as she wraps her jacket tighter against her skin. Sheʼs forgotten that fall in Ohio gets colder than in New Mexico, and her leather jacket puts up no fight against the forty-six degrees Fahrenheit hitting her before she sets foot inside the building. The reception is aseptic, just a desk with a computer on it, flanked by posters calling for recruitment; Jenna canʼt help the smile that creeps up her face when she thinks of another building, another time, when need and love had made both the Cameron sisters enlist in an adventure that had left them reeling and broken. Unconsciously she rubs her thumb over the tattoo imprinted on the inside of her left wrist. _Time to man up_ , she tells herself, snickering at her own choice of words. The bored-looking woman sitting at the desk looks up from inspecting her nails when Jenna approaches.

“May I help you?” she says, and it surprises Jenna to notice that sheʼs not military. 

“My nameʼs Jenna Cameron. Iʼm here to get clearance to visit Charlotte Rebecca Cameron,” she explains, taking some papers out of the bag that she grabbed from her trunk before. The forms are neatly organized; Jenna doesnʼt like chaos to reign in her life, and sheʼs filled the dotted lines with all her information and Charlieʼs beforehand so she wouldnʼt waste any time. “Here, I think I have everything covered.” She hands the papers to the woman, whoʼs looking unimpressed with her.

“Leave them there,” the woman gestures vaguely toward the surface of the desk while she turns to the computer and punches some keys. “Whoʼs the inmate you want visit clearance?”

“Charlotte Rebecca Cameron,” Jenna repeats, already frowning. She doesnʼt like repeating herself. “Do you need me to spell it?”

“No, thank you,” the woman – _Rhona Shelley_ according to her name tag – replies, typing up fast. “Thereʼs no one under that name here.”

“Look again,” Jenna snaps. The feeling of dread that has been pooling in her gut since sheʼs hung up on Kyle only grows. “My sister was transferred here a couple of weeks ago, following Master Sergeant Jesse Manesʼ orders,” she explains.

“Wait a moment,” Rhona Shelley commands, as she stands up and disappears through a door on the side of the reception hall, leaving Jenna alone. A couple of uniformed women walk by; Jenna thinks they might be guards as well, but she canʼt be sure. After a couple of minutes, Rhona Shelley shows up again, with a stack of papers in her hands and a frown matching Jennaʼs on her face. “Miss Cameron, your sister never made it to Marysville,” she informs. “There was no record of orders for her to transfer here.”

“That canʼt be possible,” Jenna protests, but Rhona Shelley is already sitting down on her chair and leaving the papers in front of her. “She was transferred.”

“She isnʼt here,” Rhona repeats. She proceeds to peruse through the papers, promptly ignoring Jenna.

“Canʼt you please tell me where my sister is?” Jenna tries for politeness but fails halfway through when her words come out spiteful and angry.

“Sadly, I canʼt,” the other woman tells her, brushing past the papers without looking back up at her. “Thatʼs confidential.”

“Iʼm her sister!” Jenna snaps. “Iʼm her only family!”

“Sorry,” Rhona says, although she doesnʼt sound sorry at all. “I canʼt do anything.”

Jenna huffs but pushes herself off the desk, walking back out. Once faced against the cold air and the fading sun, she closes her eyes. Manes had told her Charlie would be in Marysville, but he had lied to her. She wonders which other lies heʼd fed her, but she already knows the answer for that – sheʼs been working with Alex and Kyle for a while, sheʼs seen Max and his brother-in-law, and even if she doesnʼt fully understand whatʼs going on, Jenna has the inkling that Isobel Evans and Michael Guerin arenʼt the evil Manes wanted her to believe they were. Her train of thought trails off as she realizes her mistake.

She shouldnʼt have trusted Jesse Manes; her instincts told her so when he tried to blackmail her into helping him. Now she knows he tricked her to get her away from Roswell, and it irks her. Jesse Manes doesnʼt act without a purpose, and Jenna would be crazy if she thought otherwise.

Rubbing a hand over her face, the other gripping the edges of her jacket as though she was holding the edges of a reality crumbling down to ashes, Jenna knows exactly what she should be doing.

Walking past the two guards who eye her once again as she rushes to her car, she yanks the door open and jumps inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter starts with an off-voice, very much the same as the show itself. This chapter is Max's voice, in case you hadn't noticed.
> 
> The music Jenna's listening to in her car is as follows:
> 
>  _Big Yellow Taxi_ by Counting Crows  
>  _High Hopes_ by Panic! At The Disco  
>  _Natural_ by Imagine Dragons
> 
> Fun fact: the working title for this hasn't always been monster!fic, it's actually been **Trinity Fic**. If you've read so far, you already know why.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still amazed at how much you all are enjoying this story, even though it's long and I'm pretty sure confusing at times, with all the changing characters. Thank you very much to all of you who left a comment, gave kudos, reblogged and liked on tumblr, or simply read and enjoyed it. You can't possibly know how much that means to me.
> 
> Within this chapter you will find some answers, but many more questions. I hope you all like it!
> 
> Thanks once again to [brightloveee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee) for her support and her hard work on this. It takes a lot of effort and time to make this story readable, and she graciously offers her help every single time. I only own my mistakes.

> They say that the true awakening takes place within, as though you have any control on how and when you wake up to the perils and dangers of this life weʼre leading. But the truth is, you canʼt control the way your mind realizes one day that you are not alone in this universe. Once upon a time, my father found something that made him believe. The monsters are among us, waiting for their moment to attack, and itʼs our sacred duty to defend this planet from their invasion. The day I opened my eyes to that truth, there was no stepping back for me. Iʼm a man with a legacy, and I will live up to it.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Maria looks down at Michaelʼs frame sprawled on her couch. He has his eyes open, and there haven’t been any changes in his breathing patterns ever since Kyle left the office to go grab his things. Maria isnʼt sure whatʼs going on, but sheʼs taking advantage of the situation to think about what has happened and all the things that donʼt really add up.

Michael looks peaceful, almost as though he’s sleeping. She smiles softly at his curls plastered to his forehead, imagining him by her side on a lazy Sunday morning, tracing patterns on her dark skin to wake her up – the moment she was robbed of that rushed morning in Texas not that long ago. Sheʼs surprised by her own yearning for some normalcy among the chaos her life has become; her mother isnʼt improving and sheʼs buried deep in debt after all these years seeking a cure that always seems to slip through her fingers. She desires a hand to hold hers through the pain of daily life, a respite from the despair of watching as her only rock crumbles under the crushing force of an illness no one understands. 

Her eyes fall on Michaelʼs left hand. Itʼs so obvious, so evident, that she has to swallow hard around the lump in her throat that has nothing to do with having him unconscious on her couch. His mangled limb has been a gossip thread for so long, passing through all sorts of ideas varying from an accident with the cattle to an angry boyfriend after finding him getting frisky with his girl. Maria has never asked, mainly because it isnʼt hers to know, but mostly because when Michael first showed up with a bandaged hand she had been busy coping with her best friendʼs death. 

But now she canʼt ignore it. The constant of broken bones and crooked fingers that grabbed the beers at awkward angles is now replaced by newly-unblemished skin and perfectly right fingers. Maria reaches out and caresses his hand, not really knowing what she expects to find. Itʼs still not smooth, even without the scars Michaelʼs hands wear the calluses of a life spent working, but the feeling isnʼt the one she had when she accidentally brushed her hand to his during their Texas rounder. Thereʼs a spark there, a tingle that reminds her of static electricity shooting up her spine. She frowns, ready to step back, but she finds it hard for her to walk away even if itʼs just a few steps. 

Michael has something addictive about him, even when heʼs scared the shit out of her with her open eyes and unmoving frame. Maria has got a first fix of it and now she needs more, much more, so much that sheʼs ready to risk a lifelong friendship for one more taste of the drug that sits on Michaelʼs secrets. 

A loud noise outside the bar breaks the magic of their moment, and Maria shrinks away from Michael. She hears voices, screaming loud enough to seep through the thick, soundproof walls of her sanctuary. With a sigh and a last glance at Michaelʼs mystery, she steps out of her office and locks it from the outside. 

On the edge of reality, Michael sighs as he watches Maria scurry away, out of the room and into the wild unknown of the outside world. "Sheʼs going to freak out when she finds out,” he tells his sister from his spot across her in the darkened space theyʼre sharing. “Itʼs not going to be pretty.” 

“Why did you come to her?" Isobel asks, genuine curiosity laced in her words. “You said youʼd love Alex Manes forever.”

“I also said that loving him hurts like a crash landing,” he points out. “Besides, I donʼt really have to explain myself to you, Isobel.” 

“You canʼt lie to me here,” she tells him. Thereʼs a hurt in her words that strings Michael as well. “I donʼt want to lose you like weʼve lost Max, Michael. I donʼt want you to make the same mistakes Iʼve made.” 

“I doubt that Maria will turn out to be an alien serial killer,” Michael frowns at her. He sighs again when she flinches, visibly hurt by his words. “Iʼm sorry, Iz. I shouldnʼt have said that.” 

“Well, we canʼt know if Maria is an alien,” his sister speaks softly. Michael can feel her efforts in disguising the distress his words have caused. “She isnʼt the serial killer we were looking for, but that doesnʼt mean she doesnʼt have her own secrets. I am trying to protect you.” _The way no one could protect me_ goes unspoken but understood. Michael turns his back on her, but that doesnʼt deter her from chastising him. “Telling her our secret could go so wrong. We have just found out what happens when we choose the wrong person to trust. Alex and Liz are way better than Noah,” and she shudders at the name rolling off her tongue, “but they have hurt both you and Max. Love works that way. It hurts and it gives and it takes. Adding Maria to the mix without knowing how sheʼd react is risky, Michael.”

“What are we going to do now?" he changes subjects. He tries to make it obvious that he doesnʼt want to talk about his heartʼs issues any longer. “Max has left us here and has gone to the next level. Whatever it means, wherever it is.”

“And Rosa is alive,” Isobel adds. She shakes her head; Michael can feel it rather than see it, their connection is so strong in their shared mindspace. “This is such a mess, and without Max I donʼt know how weʼre going to go on.” 

Part of Michael wants to agree. Max has decided, once again, whatʼs best for them all and heʼs gone on, away from them, through a wormhole to someplace neither Isobel nor Michael himself could follow. It felt so final. Life is going to be different now, they will need to face a world where Max isnʼt there anymore. They will need to cover his death, to make up some excuses, to move on somehow. 

They get to make their own decisions and set their own rules. 

“Itʼs our time now, Isobel,” he tells her. “We get to decide what we do and how we do it. Max isn’t here anymore to force us to keep our secret or to decide for us.”

“But–”

“We get to live on our own terms. And I am going to do it, starting now,” he says, taking a step away from her, when a pain ripples through him. He doubles over, heaving and panting. 

“Michael,” he hears Isobel, voice harsh and broken. He turns around to see her pale and retching. “Whatʼs going on?”

A wave of nausea surges through him. He canʼt understand it, but thereʼs a murmur in his mind that sounds so much like Max telling him to run to the cave, to find the pods. He blinks, the pain receding but the voice growing stronger. “Itʼs Max,” he says. “Heʼs calling for us.” 

“Then we go,” Isobel decides. Michael doesnʼt have the strength to argue with her about her sick codependence with Max, a link that got weakened for him when he left Roswell at seven and that ended up severed when he took the blame for Rosaʼs death. He nods. 

The blurry seams of his world become sharp and pointy all of a sudden, and his eyes focus on the ceiling of a room he doesnʼt recognize. He blinks, he coughs, and then he remembers. He remembers Noah and the pain and the death, but also Alex and a guitar and a kiss. And Maria. 

Wobbling, Michael gets to his feet and walks up to the door, only to find it locked. With a little effort, he picks on the lock and simply runs away, allowing his psyche to guide him on a quest to find whatever Max needs from him.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Iʼm sorry you had to witness that, son,” Michelle is speaking softly, but Kyle isnʼt really registering any of her words. His eyes are still trained on the now covered body of Hank, being lifted into the coronerʼs car. “Itʼs not a pleasant view.”

“Iʼve seen my fair share of death, mom,” he retaliates slowly. His gaze flickers from the stretcher to the front door of the Wild Pony, where a bewildered Maria is watching the scene. “But I guess I have to go talk to Maria,” he suggests. “See if I can help her somehow, she looks like sheʼs going to faint any moment now.”

“Iʼll need to talk to her too,” Michelle tells him before he turns around. "And you. You tried to save him, and heʼs dead in her parking lot. Iʼm sorry but thatʼs how things should be done.” She looks apologetically to him. "When you deem her calm enough, could you tell her to come talk to me? I donʼt want to issue a warrant, and I donʼt want her to talk to anyone who might make her feel uncomfortable.” 

Kyle hears the words his mother isnʼt speaking – the shared fear of those who arenʼt completely white in a small town like Roswell, in the middle of the deepest America anyone could think of. They have a whiter than white dead man on the parking lot of a bar run by a black woman, and the office leading the investigation is Latina. If they arenʼt careful, this situation could get out of hand easily, and Kyle doesnʼt need attention drawn to either of them, wherever they’re from, for that matter. Not when they have a Master Sergeant paralyzed in a basement, one alien sprawled on the couch of Mariaʼs office in the back of the Wild Pony, and what sounds awfully like a very difficult situation where Alex is helping Liz. 

“Iʼll go talk to her then,” Kyle promises her. “If you think it could be of any help, when sheʼs calm enough I could bring us both to the precinct.” 

Michelle looks at him with a knowing glint in her eyes, and her lips curve around a single word, _thanks_. With that, he squeezes her hand and retreats back to the door where Maria has stopped pacing and is now openly freaking out. Kyle watches as she bites down on the nail of her right fingers, eyes trained to the coronerʼs car as the driver revs up the engine and the vehicle veers away from the parking lot. The bystanders begin to disperse in slow motion, small groups still crowding the space as they gossip about what has happened. Kyle doesnʼt recognize anyone from Roswell, theyʼre probably tourists who came to visit the museum and the crash site. 

“Maria,” he begins. “Iʼm so sorry. I just stumbled upon– _that_.” 

“What happened?” she asks nervously. Kyle sighs. “Was that Hank?” 

“Yeah, it was,” he settles for saying. He isnʼt sure how much Maria knows, if anything, but heʼs not going to be the one letting the cat out of the bag. It definitely isnʼt his secret to tell, even if it is his legacy. “Since it happened in your parking lot, my mother wants to talk to you. Itʼs just going to be a chat,” he rushes to add when Maria snaps her head up and looks right through him with weary eyes. “Nothing major.” 

“Hank is dead. In my parking lot,” Maria informs him, as though Kyle doesnʼt know whatʼs going on. “And Michaelʼs still in my office looking more dead than alive, suffering from some condition you as a doctor canʼt diagnose. He doesnʼt like hospitals so Iʼm stuck with him for how long? Until he wakes up?" 

Kyle bites his lip. Life would be easier if she knew. _Everything_ would be easier if the world knew about aliens and superpowers and massive government conspiracies. And yet, he is the one left with the task of cleaning up after whatever natural disaster has happened to keep Michael in that sort of stasis. 

Itʼs like a bulb has been lit in his mind. Whatever the reason, Kyle thinks he knows how to help Michael; the trickiest part is to actually act on his idea. “I think I know how to help him,” he offers. “But it will involve you helping me getting his sorry ass into my car and then respecting his privacy enough to stay put until I come pick you up so we can go talk to my mother.”

He sees the moment his words sink in Mariaʼs mind, for the ugliness creeps to her features as a frown knits her eyebrows together. “Donʼt you think even for a second that I wonʼt be going with you, Valenti,” she warns, eyes squinting against the clear light of day. “He came to me, he needs me. He _chose_ me. Iʼm in.” 

Unbidden and uncalled, Kyle feels anger building up inside of himself at her choice of words. He almost has no time to bite his tongue before replying with all the grief heʼs feeling for Alex and what he now thinks has happened between them. Kyle is sure Alex has been waiting for hours for Michael to show up, under the sun in the junkyard, until Liz called him, forcing him to give up on the last thread of hope. Kyle knows Alex – he does, even after all the shit he put them through – and he knows Alex wouldnʼt have hung onto a cause he thought was hopeless. And while Alex was waiting, Michael was at the Wild Pony with Maria. The entire time.

Kyle knows there are tons of things they could have been doing, apart from playing guitar.

The betrayal he feels surprises Kyle – even if Alex never said anything about his feelings for Guerin, Kyle had been able to _feel_ them. He wouldnʼt have thought heʼd be so protective of Alex Manes after everything theyʼve been through, but the truth is, heʼd punch Guerin hard in that sardonic face of his for giving Alex hope for a future he was already planning on breaking. “No, youʼre not,” he replies, more viciously than he intended. “He may have come to you, but _you_ called Alex,” he keeps on, accusing her with his words while he tries hard not to point at her with one finger. “Why did you do that?" 

“Heʼs my friend,” Maria tells him, clearly annoyed by his words although Kyle can tell sheʼs shrunk a bit, a crack in her cool exterior only threatened by the fear of what has been going on in her parking lot. “Heʼs been my best friend for half my life. Why would he call _you_?” 

Kyle bursts out in laughter as he pushes past her and into the bar. “I see now why Guerin came to you,” he says shaking his head. “High schoolʼs ten years to the left, but youʼre still sour from it. I donʼt have to apologize to you. I already made my peace with everyone I needed to.” He strides through the floor until he reaches the door of the office, where he stops abruptly, whatever he intended to say lost in his throat. Maria almost crashes against his back, her heels tapping on the floor impatiently. 

“Listen, Valenti,” she speaks up. “I donʼt know why you think you can speak for Alex in this particular–” 

“Shut up,” Kyle cuts her off. He pushes aside the memories of Caulfield – it feels so far away even if itʼs been only twenty hours since they reached the facility – and all the feelings that heʼs been fighting against ever since. This is bigger than everything else, and heʼs just now beginning to comprehend that he doesnʼt understand any of it. “The door is open,” he whispers. 

“What?” Maria screeches, shoving him aside, all fight having left her. 

Kyle points at the door, hanging off its hinges, half broken as though someone had ripped it from the inside. When they both peer into the office, Kyle sensing Mariaʼs distress even though heʼs no psychic, they are greeted by an abandoned scene. 

There’s not a trace of Michael’s presence anywhere, not even a crease on the leather. The couch remains untouched, and everything looks perfectly still. Kyle frowns – he believes Maria, she doesn’t need to lie to him about Guerin, but the truth is that the room is empty. 

Michael is nowhere to be found.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Rosa would be lying if she said she wasnʼt terrified as she rides in a car driven by Alex Manes while her little sister looks back every once in a while at the corpse of a very-much-dead Max Evans. Just the day before she’d been joking around the café with her father, thinking inwardly about the moment when she could tell him that she knows, that sheʼs known for a while, that she loves him all the same.

Just yesterday she was called to a deserted spot in the middle of the sandy dunes surrounding Roswell, only to witness Isobel Evans losing her shit once again. 

But Liz says itʼs been over ten years now, that the world has fully spun around the sun ten times. That sheʼs missed her little sister graduating, and Alex enlisting, and Maria taking over the Wild Pony. Only, she hasnʼt really missed it at all. 

Sheʼs been dead for over a hundred and twenty-five months. 

Rosa scoots even closer to the window as the desert spans outside, not wanting to lay eyes on Max Evansʼ body sprawled like a doll on the backseat. The ride isnʼt too long, Liz told them that the other cave isnʼt that far away, but Rosa spends half of it reminiscing of what she thinks happened to her life in the twenty-four hours since she last had consciousness. The last thing she remembers is entering a cave, following Isobelʼs instructions. For a long while that spring, Rosa felt torn between wanting to be sober and clean, and spending time with a girl she might have been developing feelings for. Sheʼs been confused, and sheʼs been giving the situation a lot of thought. But after that last image of Jasmine and Katie on the floor, everything gets blurry. She has no recollection of the following hours – Liz says that itʼs because sheʼs been dead, but Rosa simply canʼt believe it. She canʼt have been dead for a decade and brought back to life by none other than Max Evans. As though Max, the cute shy guy who would have put a damper on Lizʼs brilliant future, could be something more than a small-town kid. As though he could be _God_.

“Itʼs here,” Liz exclaims. Rosa looks in front of her, vaguely recognizing the place as Alex kills the engine. “Cʼmon, we canʼt lose any more time, we need to get him inside a functioning pod as soon as possible!”

Alex steps out of the car and walks around it to the door opposite to where Rosa is sitting. She tries to open her door, she has her hand on the handle, but she just canʼt muster up the courage to actually turn it down and put her feet on the ground. “Rosa?” she hears at her back. When she turns around, she can see Alex and Liz looking at her as though sheʼs just grown a second head. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” she lies. _¿Qué sentido tiene contar la verdad?_ , she thinks. “Itʼs just this estúpida door in the way.”

“I was thinking you could push Max from your side and then get out from here?” Alex suggests, clearly annoyed at the whole situation and a tad bit worried about Lizʼs mental health if the look in his eyes is sending Rosa the right signals. “Please, help us here. I know everythingʼs a bit confusing and–”

“You donʼt know shit, Alex!” she finally explodes, tugging the hem of the blanket closer to her chest. There should be scars where the autopsy would have cut her skin, if that story about her own death is true, but her collarbone is smooth and sheʼs counted her moles. Everythingʼs in place. Yet she has this weird feeling that sheʼs been thrown into a well too deep to climb out, her feet never touching the bottom, the water surrounding her, and she keeps drowning. “What the hell is going on? Why are you so invested in _not_ burying Max Evans when itʼs obvious heʼs _dead_? Dead, Liz, muerto. But you keep talking about aliens and nonsense, and I canʼt believe what Iʼm about to say but, we should call the police!”

“Breathe,” Alex tells her, all the while pulling at Maxʼs limp arm. “Letʼs do something, okay? Why donʼt you wait in the car, this shouldnʼt take us more than a couple of minutes, and when weʼre back weʼll figure everything out?” He looks hopeful, the same glint in his eyes that sheʼs used to catch whenever she looks at him. This Alex may look older, may be wiser, but deep down heʼs the same scared teen she knows. 

“Like hell Iʼm waiting here on my own in the middle of the fucking desert,” she finally says, pushing hard into Maxʼs back, a bit apprehensive to be touching a corpse. “Letʼs get done with this and then, caballero, youʼre so going to explain everything to me.” She follows them out of the car, helping while they drag Max over the ground and down a small rocky path apparently leading to nowhere. She can hear a distinct click every time Alex moves, and some of those movements elicit a wince from him – like when he doubles over to hitch Max higher in his grip, all the while helping Rosa keep Maxʼs legs from bumping on the rocks, and he manages to lift the body up enough so Liz doesn’t have to bear too much of the weight. He favors one of his legs, and drags his right foot like it pains him.

Rosa doesnʼt have the time to ask, because Liz is kicking down some wood covering the entrance to a cave. There are flashes of memories threatening her – that entrance where sheʼs sure sheʼll find Katie and Jasmine lying unconscious on the floor, the room where those oval things sparkle in a blinding way. Rosa feels his heart rate rising at the mere thought of meeting Isobel Evans inside, and thatʼs when she realizes that, _actually_ , for her it has just been less than twenty-four hours.

But for the rest itʼs been much longer.

Liz doesnʼt have time to register her sister scurrying away closer to the rocky walls. Sheʼs taking in her surroundings, the evident signs of a battle inside the space where she kept Isobel for six weeks until they found a cure, the pool of dried blood in a corner, and what looks like a pot above a dying fire. She looks closer – inside thereʼs enough silver melted to cover Max entirely. “Joder,” she utters, low enough not to startle the silence reigning inside. “This is where everything took place yesterday.”

“What do you mean, _everything_?” Alex asks, holding Max in an awkward angle before letting him roll on the ground. 

“Noah,” she offers as explanation. “I thought Mikey told you everything!”

“I havenʼt talked to Michael since last night, before the storm,” Alex explains. “I donʼt know what happened. Oh,” he breathes out when realization hits him. "It was his blood.”

"Cʼmon, Alex,” Liz urges him. "We need to get him naked and covered in that silver goo before we can put him in the pod.” 

She doesnʼt wait for him to catch up on her words. Liz helps Alex out Max down on the floor and then she starts moving around, carefully avoiding the blood stains and the dents in the rocks that look suspiciously like a head has hit the walls. She proceeds to unbutton the black shirt covering Maxʼs torso, hands shaking slightly as she is unable to switch back into scientist mode. This isnʼt one of her lab rats. This isnʼt a model under her microscope. 

This is the _fucking_ love of her life that she still feels through a connection thatʼs feeble and dying, and she has to try her best to stop it from going silent at all. Because cutting that link will mean that Max is dead. And Liz isnʼt ready to say goodbye just yet. “Help me, please,” she begs, still kneeling on the hard, uneven ground; for the first time since she enlisted Alex in this quest – or maybe it was Rosaʼs idea, Lizʼs mind is still foggy on that aspect – she realizes what it must feel like for him and his prosthetic. Sheʼll have to make up for it later on, but right now sheʼs a woman with one goal and one goal only.

Alex kneels by her side and starts working on Maxʼs trousers, struggling to get them down his legs; Liz doesnʼt want to think about why it’s so difficult to maneuver around Maxʼs body, because _rigor mortis_ isnʼt something Liz wants to think about right now. She can still feel Max deep inside her soul, the connection she practically begged out of him vibrating in low frequencies. It is still very much _alive_ , and Liz is going to hold onto that tiny thread of hope – if she can feel him, then there’s a chance he can come back. She just needs time, and she will get time – she saved Isobel from a sure death, and even if it took her six weeks Isobel was well and dandy and _alive_ by the time she managed to produce the right serum with Michaelʼs help. 

“Michael!” she yelps, straightening her back as she speaks. She meets a startled Alex and a frightened Rosa when she looks around. Rosa recoils even further into the rock wall, and Alex has stopped in his motions to get the pot full of melted silver to look at her like sheʼs gone definitely wild. “I need Michael to solve this. Last time, he was the one who pointed me in the right direction, and he offered his own blood for tests and–”

“Are you telling me that Michael Guerin volunteered to be cut open for biomedical study?” Alex says, looking as taken aback as his words sink in. “The same Michael Guerin who wouldnʼt go get his hand fixed because it would mean going _near_ a hospital?”

“I think there was more to it than–” Liz sighs. “You know why he couldnʼt have his hand healed, Alex. You know, _now_.” She looks at him encouragingly. There is a glint of sadness permanently etched in those chocolate eyes she used to read like an open book, and Liz has the inkling that the pain reflected there has more to do with what Alex left behind when he abandoned Roswell than with what he lived through during those ten years away. “Letʼs just get Max ready to be put in the pod, okay? I will worry about the rest later.”

They work efficiently – theyʼre a military man and a biomedical engineer, after all – and in less than ten minutes they have Max dripping melted silver. Rosa makes a pained sound, trying to get her sister’s attention away from the body that’s now covered in grey goop, but Liz canʼt focus on anything that isnʼt getting her boyfriend inside one of the pods; she wishes she knew which one had been Maxʼs so she could place him in a familiar space until she figures out how to bring him back. _Donʼt be silly_ , she tells herself. _He wonʼt be feeling anything because heʼd be in a pod! But heʼd still have a chance. Focus, Elizabeth. Focus._

She manages to haul Max near the pods with a little help of Alex, but once theyʼre facing the blinding white Liz realizes sheʼs miscalculated one small but very important detail in the plan. When they had put Isobel in the pod, she had been the one to situate herself inside. She was conscious.

Max isnʼt.

“How are we going to go about this, Liz?” Alex asks, sounding even less confident than he has during the whole ordeal.

“What the hell are you doing with my brotherʼs body?” they all hear at their back, anguished voice coming from the entrance to the cave. When they all turn around, they face Michael, looking every single drop of despair his voice shows.

Alex has never seen him more beautiful, with his curls wild around his head like a halo, his eyes focused intensely in the scene in front of him as though he canʼt believe what theyʼre doing inside the cave. Alex sighs. “Guerin,” he begins, taking in slowly the appearance of the man whoʼs occupied his dreams for over a decade. Just some hours ago he had been waiting for Michael at the junkyard, thinking about the storm that brew merely seconds after he lay himself bare in front of Michael. Alexʼs eyes roam over Michaelʼs frame – the white t-shirt he himself had watched Michael take the night before, the jeans that are ripped and worn-out and yet so Michael, the hands that twitch at his sides as he tries to keep himself in check.

Alex has to bite back a yelp when he sees two perfect, unblemished hands.

“Mikey,” Liz says, stepping in front of Alex. “We need to keep Max in a pod so he doesnʼt die.”

“Heʼs already dead,” Michael says, no emotion shown in his voice this time, as though the words drew the energy out of him. “Nothing you do will bring him back.”

“I can feel him, Michael,” Liz whines. The way she says his name makes Alex cringe; he has never heard Liz so desperate before. “Heʼs still in there! I can feel him!”

“Liz,” Rosa steps up. When Michael sees her, his face shows every bit of regret and ache Alex knows he feels deep inside before the mask is back up. Alex knows that mask as well – itʼs the face of a man who thinks the whole world has their backs on him, a kid who has grown up believing that humanity is a threat more than anything. 

He wishes he could kiss that look away, but thereʼs only so much Alex can do to forget that Michael ran off to Maria, now that his hand has been healed, presumably by Max.

“Great,” he huffs. He doesnʼt address her specifically, instead stepping further into the cave. Rosa crawls back to the shadows, a frown on her face. Alex sighs. “What were you trying to do here? And whereʼs Isobel? She should have arrived.”

“What does Isobel have to do with all this?” Alex asks. Max is still propped between Liz and himself, the weight making him swift uncomfortably, but Michael doesnʼt show any signs of reaching out to help them.

“Max called us,” he explains quickly, the name sending a shiver up Lizʼs spine that Alex can feel through the vibration in Maxʼs body. “I just–I donʼt know. I had to come here. Isobel _should_ be here.”

“Max called you?” Liz questions. “How?”

“The same way you got called last night,” Alex connects the dots so easily that it pains him to know heʼs been so blind before. After Caulfield, he forgot Michaelʼs words, _itʼs like screaming from far away_ , but they make sense; Michael had been summoned through their shared psychic link right in the middle of Alexʼs speech in the airstream. Which means, “Max is really alive, if you can feel him.”

“I told you he was alive! Is alive!” Liz protests, Max wobbling between them. “Listen, Mikey, I know itʼs not–Iʼm sorry, okay? But we need to put him _in_ a pod.”

“You wonʼt be able to,” Michael says. Alex frowns again, looking between Liz and Michael. “He has to be conscious to enter the pod.”

“How do you know that?” Alex asks him when it’s obvious that Liz isn’t going to question Michael’s words. _For a science woman_ , he thinks to himself, _you can be really gullible, Liz_.

“I just _know_ ,” Michael insists. Alex arches an eyebrow his way, and Michael sighs, looking defeated.

“I don’t have any memories from _before_ , you know that,” Michael tries to explain. “I just woke up and I knew I had to get out of the pod. We weren’t conscious, and no one was there to pull us out. We could only get _out_ when we actively thought about it. And when Isobel–” he trails off. Alex fights back the urge to shake him out of what looks like a reverie, but Michael snaps out of it on his own a few seconds later. “She was well awake, even if she was dying, when she reentered the pod.” 

Alex watches as Michael shudders at the memory. He wasn’t around when Isobel got so sick that their pods were the only solution to keep her alive – he’s known about it because Michael told him during their heart-wrenching conversation outside the Airstream – but he knows nearly losing Isobel has wrecked Michael, shaking him to his very core just in a way so close to what Alex has witnessed at Caulfield that it scares him.

“She wasn’t conscious when we took her out,” Liz argues, feebly.

“Max pulled her out,” Michael explains. “That’s why I think we need to be aware to get into the pods, but not to get out. It’s empirical science, after all.”

They all fall silent, the quiet only broken by Rosa’s heavy breathing behind them, from her spot near the cave wall. Alex frowns as a thought forms in his mind, and he almost smacks his forehead for not having thought about it in the first place.

“But you could put him in,” Alex marvels, hitting his forehead with his hand. “How didnʼt we see it before? You can move him around!”

“Just like you did Jasmine and Katie and–” Liz trails off, her words dying before being said, but Rosa has already heard them.

“He moved me, right?” she says shakily. “After Isobel–after–he moved my _body_!”

“Rosa, this is not the moment.”

“Oh, but it is,” Rosa steps away from the shadows, her fragile silhouette held barely together by the seams of the blanket around her shoulders. Alex thinks briefly about how they should give her some clothes, but the blanket strikes a chord within him. It looks exactly like the one his mom would wrap him in when he was a child and woke up from his nightmares. “Are you telling me that this freak can move stuff with his mind, and that you know because he moved _mi cadáver_ when his sister killed me?”

“I thought you didnʼt remember anything?” Lizʼs voice pitches a bit by the end of the sentence. 

“Well, Iʼm having some flashes,” Rosa spits cheekily. “I donʼt want him near me.”

“He was just helping–”

“Itʼs okay, Liz,” Michael assures her, lifting his left hand. Alex hears the moment Liz realizes whatʼs happened because she lets out a cracked wail. “Iʼll move Max. I can do it. And then, weʼre going to go search for Isobel. She should have been here already.”

“You keep saying that.”

“She was at her house, so she was closer to the mines,” Michael explains. Alex watches as he swallows the rest of his explanation – he knows that the moment Michael tells Liz that he went to Maria, Liz will be supportive, because thatʼs what Liz does with Maria. With everyone, really, if only Alex would have been brave enough to confide in her about how he felt. “Letʼs just move Max, okay?” And if he sounds off, no one in the cave calls him on it.

Michael stretches out his hand and focuses. Alex realizes that, although heʼs seen Michael move the trailer the day he showed Alex his bunker, he hasnʼt in fact seen him using the full might of his powers. Itʼs quite a sight to witness – the way Maxʼs body lifts of its own volition, floating through the air, and stops in front of the pods. Michael groans, flicks his fingers, and Maxʼs hand reaches out and gets through the membrane surrounding the pod in the middle of the cave. Alex wishes he could be of more help, so he places himself right besides Michael in case he collapses. There are beads of sweat pooling by his hairline, and his face is becoming whiter by the second. 

Max enters the pod easily, but all hell breaks loose when the last of his fingertips get inside the shining bulb.

Michael sags against him under the effort of moving Maxʼs unresponsive body inside the pod. He dry heaves and coughs his lungs up. Alex holds him close to his chest, putting aside the pain he feels knowing that Michael chose Maria after everything he had gone through, because he promised Michael he wasnʼt going to look away. He wasnʼt lying when he said he considered Michael his family.

Family isnʼt only made by blood, but also by choice. Alex chose Michael a long time ago, even if he wasnʼt aware back when it happened. Now’s not the time for him to back out on the promise he made to himself, to _Michael_ ; even if all he wants to do is run away from Michael, or scream at the world for wronging him, or be angry, Alex knows what it’s like to be so lost that all you do is take the wrong turns at every crossroad. Even promises made under duress need to be kept – even if keeping this one means that the future he’s always hoped for is being, once again, snatched out of his reach.

Alex helps Michael get on his feet once again, keeping his hand on Michaelʼs lower back as they retreat out of the cave. He doesnʼt allow Michael to move the wood boards that have been blocking the cave entrance with his telekinesis, not after holding him while he retched from his recent exertion. Instead, Alex leaves him to support himself against Liz – Rosa is still wary around him, and Alex canʼt blame her, he can imagine everything has to be tenfold scarier for her right now – and he searches for something to close the entrance. Something thatʼs heavy enough that no one could move it and enter. He spots a boulder not so far, and with a little more force than he has he moves it in front of the cave; he pushes at it, rolling it over the uneven ground. He pants, beads of sweat rolling down his back as he places too much weight on his prosthesis, but the cave cannot be left in the open, and the wood boards might not be enough. He pushes and pushes until the rock rolls in place, covering the entrance with a loud whirring sound. It feels spiritual to him.

A rock in front of the cave where their healing alien Jesus lies dead in a shining pod.

He turns around to face the Ortecho girls and Michael, and simply gestures over to his Humvee. They have long days ahead of them, if theyʼre going to work together to bring Max back, even if Alex doesnʼt believe such a feat can be achieved when the resurrecting God is the one to be brought back.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He feels weightless. It’s a similar feeling to the one he got that time when Jimmy shared a joint with him, back during high school, under the bleachers between third hour and lunch time, the weed lifting his soul and making him soar.

This time, however, he doesnʼt feel ethereal. This time he knows heʼs trapped in his own body, quickly closing up as the drugs hit his nervous system. _Oh, the boldness of youth_ , he thinks, laying on the filthy floor of what used to be his bunker. One Valenti betrayed him once upon a time, and history repeats itself with the second generation. Maybe heʼll need to repeat himself once again, and obliterate the whole Valenti bloodline once and for all. 

Everything is dark around him. He canʼt tell whether heʼs having a dissociative moment or if it’s just the drugsʼ effect on his organs. All he knows is that Kyle Valenti is a man with a code, even if itʼs one mangled code that involves turning your back on your best friend and conspiring for his demise. He knows Kyle will come back and at least put him on a hospital bed, monitored and under control. He can escape from the iron watch of hospital goons if heʼs awake enough to move one single finger of his hand. Sadly, in his current predicament all he can do is wait for the drugs to kick in, collapse him from the inside out, and kill him. 

Unless he finds a solution. Unless he can convince Kyle that thereʼs another way. But itʼs too late, it seems, because his former ally is now walking away, and all he can hear is Kyleʼs muffled voice. Because thatʼs one side effect of the drugs – he canʼt move but he can hear everything, aware of his surroundings but trapped in his own body. He wonders briefly if this is what sleep paralysis feels like. 

As much as he wants to, he canʼt will his body to respond. 

He is military. He is strong. Heʼs gone to more wars than he cares to recount, and heʼs been to hell and back. There has to be something he can do to break out of this immobility and start fighting back. 

The sounds change, he can hear Alexʼs voice in and out, but his conscience is failing him. He canʼt be sure how much time has past – his brain seems to be swimming in his skull while the rest of his body is unresponsive. One moment he can hear both his youngest – that disgrace of a son, so similar to his mother that he canʼt help but hate – and Valenti, arguing before the door creaks, and the next moment he’s lying on the ground completely alone. 

Unmoving. Unable. Stopped. 

Not yet finished. 

He fights for consciousness, but it fades from his grasp. He tries to cling to lucidity using tactics he learned through years of training and deployments to places where despair and weakness lead to death. He focuses on the way his heart is slowly beating, stuttering thumps as his system closes up. He doesnʼt have to focus on the way his lungs seem to fail him, because making a point out of breathing could mean running out of air before his time is up. Thereʼs no feeling in his fingers or his toes, and his whole body feels loaded and heavy, but his ears and his mind are functioning perfectly. 

Heʼs all alone in the bunker heʼs been using all these years under the government’s unaware nose. He knows every corner of the space, every sound the machines produce, the creaky lament of the lockers being opened and closed. For so long, it had been his haven, the place to go when everything else seemed to fall down crumbling into pieces. He came here after learning the truth about Mimi; he’d sat on the very same chair his youngest son had just sat on the day he decided what to do with Jimmy and the new threat he presented. Those desks, those computers, were his only solace when Misae packed her few belongings and fled. Project Shepherd has been his life, his family legacy, and heʼd be damned if he allowed it to become rotten and broken after the weakest of his sons ravaged whatʼs left of their family heritage. 

Heʼs used to betrayal and loneliness. Heʼs always fought against the fear of being alone in their quest to save their world, feeling like an outdated war hero battling against a wall of disbelief and incomprehension. This isnʼt the lowest heʼs fallen, but as he analyzes and studies his current predicament, the more he thinks this time he might not have a safe way out. 

Heʼs most likely going to die alone in this bunker, where his best and worst days were lived. He isnʼt ready for that. 

The lack of feeling doesnʼt prevent the sting in his neck from hurting. He doesnʼt understand whatʼs going on, his eyelids still too heavy to be lifted. There are a few more stabs in other parts of his body – the crook of his arm, in between two of his ribs, and a new one next to his groin, up his thigh. The tingle in his limbs catches him by surprise, but itʼs not less surprisingly when he can open his eyes although he needs to blink a few times to adjust his eyesight to the dimly lit room. His back aches from having been on the floor for too long, although he canʼt tell how many hours it has been. Thereʼs no way to tell the passing of time underground, where there are no clocks or natural light.

The silhouette hovering above him stills for a few seconds, giving him a moment to collect himself. Eyelids still heavy, thick and tired as his whole body is, he takes in the unruly hair still in a regulation cut, the scar marring those Native American features, the dark eyes staring down at him, the smug smile. He coughs, turning his head to the side as the coughing fit evolves into something more and bile finds its way out of his system. He retches for a while before turning once again to meet those eyes, determined and hard. 

“Hi, Dad,” Flint says, a smirk on his lips and steel in his gaze.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Isobel comes to her senses on her floor, surrounded by the remnants of the picture frame she blasted not even a couple of minutes ago. Her head aches, and thereʼs a particular spot where she knows a lump will be growing later on. When she watches the clock on the wall across the room, she realizes that more than a couple minutes have passed – it looks like at least five hours have rolled by since the last time she checked the clock.

She sits up slowly, her headache making her brain swim in her skull. Itʼs the first time in her whole life on Earth that sheʼs felt less than dandy – apart from that time, not so long ago, when she almost _died_ from serum poisoning – so sheʼs at a bit of a loss. She wraps her arms around her waist, waiting for it to dwindle down. Thereʼs hammering inside her head, as if someoneʼs knocking around. She groans when the knocking becomes louder.

It takes her a while to realize that the knocking is actually taking place outside her door, and not inside her head.

“Coming!” she calls out. She thinks she can get rid of whoever is outside her door soon enough, so she can go find Max on the mines, where he called them. Sheʼs going to have to come up with an excuse for her hurry, but sheʼs a good actress, has been her whole life. She can get through this, whatever it is.

Her steps falter when her eyes catch a glimpse of a picture to her right. Hanging from the wall, in one of her favorite wooden frames, is a picture of her wedding to Noah. She would be fuming, but she doesnʼt have time. With her newfound powers, she breaks the glass over it and allows the frame to fall on the floor, where it cracks. She shrugs; sheʼll purchase a new one and frame a picture of her brothers once they’re all back on their feet.

“Mrs Bracken?” a young womanʼs voice carries through the closed door. Isobel frowns. “Mrs Bracken, are you inside?”

“Itʼs Evans-Bracken,” she says breezily as she opens the door. The chill of the morning air hits her face, and she wishes it sweeps away the tears that are threatening to fall down her cheeks at the mere thought of Noah and his name. “Good morning, how can I help you?”

Sheʼs met with the sight of two police officers – an old, almost bald man, and a young woman whoʼs probably the one to call her up. Theyʼre in their uniforms, and Isobel can see a cruiser parked at her entrance. She stops for a second to compose herself and then she speaks, giving them her best smile. “Is there anything I can assist you with, officers?”

The young woman shows her a credential, and urges her partner to do the same. “Deputy Sanchez and Deputy Wakefield, but you can call me Stephanie. We would like to talk to you about your husband, Mr Noah Bracken.”

Isobel finds herself panicking, and she’s sure all color is drained from her face, but she canʼt afford to lose her composure. She feels her smile faltering. “My husband isnʼt home right now,” she tells them, but the woman – dark and curly hair framing her features – simply nods. “Would you like to come inside and wait for him?”

“Thank you,” the woman – Stephanie – accepts her invitation and steps into her house. They get inside the living room, but the officers stop pointedly a few inches into the space, taking in the decorations but making no movement as to follow her to the couch, so she remains standing next to them. Isobel begins to sweat under her clothes. She should be heading out to the turquoise mines, but instead sheʼs entertaining some police officers sheʼs never seen before who want to talk about her husband.

“Please take a seat,” she says gently. “I donʼt think I have seen you around, and I thought I knew all police officers in town.”

“I bet,” Stephanie says, smiling softly. “Mrs Evans-Bracken, can I ask you whether you know whereʼs your husband right now?”

Isobel thinks sheʼs going to start hyperventilating. She hasnʼt had the time to think about a good cover up – should she say Noahʼs on a business trip? Should she imply Noahʼs left with her secretary? – and although sheʼs good at lying and has been her whole life, there are boundaries she doesnʼt want to trespass. Lying to the police could end her up in jail, and jail means the system, and Max isnʼt around to help her out like heʼs done with Michael in the past. She feels like crying and throwing up at the same time. “I donʼt know,” she settles for saying. “He isnʼt home right now, but Iʼm not sure if heʼs at his office.”

She hopes they buy her lies about her workaholic husband being at the office in the middle of a Monday afternoon instead of buried in the desert where she _thinks_ Michael left him, in the very same fashion that he did with the drifter all those years back. 

At least, she thinks Michael has buried Noah, but she can’t be sure. She was a bit out of it, trying to catch her breath after almost being killed by her psychopath of a husband, and she doesn’t really remember whether or not Michael has taken Noah’s fried body away from the caves to bury him with sand and guilt.

“When did you last see him, Mrs Evans-Bracken?” Deputy Wakefield questions. Isobel frowns, feigning to be deep in thought when sheʼs attempting to build a good backstory. “Donʼt tell me you donʼt remember.”

“Mark,” thereʼs a warning in Stephanieʼs voice that gives Isobel a few more seconds before she decides that telling the truth on this particular topic might be the best way to go around the issue. “Mrs Evans-Bracken, did your husband spend the night at home?”

“I donʼt know why youʼre asking me all of those questions,” Isobel says tentatively. “Last time I saw Noah, he was getting in his car. That was – oh, that was last night. I went to bed early.”

“Is it normal for your husband to spend the night out?” Mark asks again, and Isobel is _thisclose_ to melting his brain and stomping over them both. Her brother needs her, she can hear his cosmic call, and yet sheʼs still derailed by a couple of police agents who are asking really weird questions about Noah, as though they know.

“No, it isnʼt. Should I be worried?” Isobel fakes an anguished frown. “Whatʼs going on? Why are you here asking questions about Noah? Has something happened to him?”

She can tell the moment Stephanie makes her decision to speak, because the young woman inhales deeply and reaches out a comforting hand that lands on top of Isobelʼs arm. She shivers at the contact. “Mrs Evans-Bracken, Iʼm so sorry. We should have told you first thing when we came here. I am so, so sorry.”

“Iʼm starting to get really worried,” Isobel retaliates, this time without any need to act. She doesnʼt like the sympathy in Stephanieʼs eyes. “Excuse me, who did you say you were, again?”

“Deputies Stephanie Lopez and Mark Bonts, from the Sheriff Department,” she says once again. “Iʼm afraid we come bearing bad news, Mrs Evans-Bracken. Why donʼt you take a seat?”

“I donʼt want a seat. I want the truth.”

Stephanie sighs but looks her straight in her eyes, and Isobel realizes that she isnʼt worried about what might happen to her if anyone found Noahʼs body. Sheʼs worried sick about what the government could do to them all _when_ they find out and dissect Noahʼs corpse in the name of autopsies. 

“Sheriff Valenti wanted your brother to bring this news to you, but sheʼs nowhere to be found.” Stephanie fidgets with her shirt, making Isobel even more nervous. “We have found your husband Noah Bracken on the side of the road, struck by lightning, near his car.”

“What?” Isobel says faintly. She isnʼt faking the way sheʼs running out of breath, although she canʼt tell if the lightheaded sensation is due to the lack of breathing or the fear mounting in her gut.

“Iʼm sorry, Mrs Evans-Bracken. Your husband has been found dead in the desert.”

Her world narrows for a second on those words, and then everything comes crashing down: the handprints, the alien signs, the way the lightning threaded through Max and into Noah until it fried it in a way that canʼt be confused with accidental lightning strikes. Everything happens in slow motion but sheʼs falling to the floor in flashes of speed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter starts with an off-voice, very much the same as the show itself. This chapter is Jesse's voice, and the first line is a direct quote taken from [Awaken The Greatness Within](https://www.awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/).
> 
> Given that the holidays are upon us already, I sadly announce a hiatus in updating this fic. It will be back on January 7th, but don't fret. I plan on posting some other things meanwhile, I just wanted to have a bit more time to work on what's already written of this and to write further more!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My heart belongs to you, lovely people. All of you who still ask about this fic, and who read, comment, leave kudos, like and reblog on Tumblr. You can't really know how much it means to me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this new installment, at least as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> My amazing friend [brightloveee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee) is still there for me, holding my hand and walking me through what can only be described as a brain meltdown every once in a while. Without her efforts, nothing you read would make sense. Thank you once again for your time and your help, love. Of course, all and any mistakes are mine.

> My whole life people have told me to stay in my lane, calm down, wait. And for my whole life, Iʼve followed the rules. Iʼve waited. Iʼve thrived. Iʼve hidden and Iʼve lied. But now things have changed. Now the dead walk among us, and there are gods living with us. I have my sister back, as angry and disappointed in all of us as she is, but I have lost so much as well. We all have to relearn our ways, somehow. So now I decide how to live my life, and itʼs not the time to wait. Nowʼs the time for action, and I will die myself before letting fear paralyze me once again.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It takes Jenna twenty-seven hours to come back to Roswell, once sheʼs decided that she needs to get to the root of the problem in order to be able to solve it.

When she slams closed the door of her car and drives away from Marysville, a plan is already forming in her mind. She heads to the tiny hotel where sheʼd booked a room and gets herself checked in, ever-present scowl on her features preventing the clerk from chit-chatting with her. She locks herself up in the room, small and perfunctory, dropping her travel bag on the bed and searching for her laptop in the bottom of the second duffel bag she carries. Having been on the road for days to get up to Ohio, Jenna wanted to disguise her most expensive items, hence putting the laptop bag inside a completely frayed duffel. She plugs the device to the only outlet in the room and boosts it up. 

A picture of Charlie smiling unabashedly at her from her screen, seventeen and unaware of the future that awaits her, takes Jenna down memory lane while the system gets started.

> “You should have come to me, Charlie,” she laments at the other side of the bulletproof window at the military holding facility. Her sister looks wary and thin, much thinner than the last time they saw each other. “I could have helped you. Now I canʼt do anything.” 
> 
> Her sister smirks but it lacks the edge Jennaʼs used to seeing in her green eyes. “Then it would have been the two of us on this side of the glass,” Charlie says. “You wouldnʼt have been able to help, Jen. No one can help me.”
> 
> “You just donʼt know,” Jenna insists, pressing on the matter. She hasnʼt been told the reasons why her sister has been arrested while on base. Jenna doesnʼt understand half of whatʼs going on, she only knows that Charlie is now held at a military prison awaiting to be court-martialed. “Lemme help you now,” she pleads, hand reaching to be placed on the glass, the tattoo on her wrist in full display. “I canʼt lose you too.” 
> 
> “Youʼre not losing me,” Charlie assures her, mimicking her movement and lifting a hand to covers Jennaʼs at her side of the glass. “Weʼll get through this. But you have to go on without me.” 
> 
> “Never,” Jenna vows. “I promised, remember? I will fight, Charlie. Whatever it is, we will get through it together.” 
> 
> “Whatever it is?” Charlie frowns. ”You donʼt know what happened, right? They havenʼt told you.” Jenna stares at her, silently asking for an explanation, for a word to help her comprehend, but it never comes. Charlie remains silent for the longest time, her hand on the glass hovering above Jennaʼs, until itʼs time for her to leave as visitʼs time is over.

Jenna stares at her wrist tattoo, half of what it should be, the other half lost in the midst of Jesse Manesʼ wrongdoing. Sheʼs sure that the Master Sergeant is behind Charlie never reaching Marysville, but sheʼll need proof if she wants to go after him. She needs a hint as to where Charlie might be, and she needs back up if sheʼs going to face Manes about this.

Belatedly, she remembers the call she received when she was driving up to Ohio, the distress in Kyleʼs voice, the static that couldnʼt erase the words, the feeling deep down in her gut that something was utterly wrong. 

The screen lights up with some webpage. Jenna peruses the Internet paying half a mind to what sheʼs doing, jumping from one document to another as she tries to write down Charlieʼs whereabouts chronologically. She knows her sister has been kept in a special military prison, sheʼs been up to visit her once a month no matter the distance whenever sheʼs been stateside. High security facilities are old friends of hers, because Charlie has been jumping from one to another for the past five years. 

Jenna sighs. 

Sheʼs staring at her work, a timeline of dates and places that makes no sense whatsoever. She tries to find a pattern, if only to attempt to figure out where Manes has taken her sister, when she realizes sheʼs approaching this particular subject at a bad angle. 

Jenna opens a different document and starts typing everything sheʼs learned about Jesse Manes in the past months, after helping Alex and Kyle with their research. She has an eidetic memory, and a good one at that; there are few details that escape her as she dutifully lists everything she knows, every place theyʼve talked about, and she does a little research about the facts that she didn’t know before that would be important – Jesse Manes is such a hero to the American military that his feats are well praised in every public forum. When sheʼs done, she leans back on the uncomfortable chair, a frown dissipating as she notices the pattern. 

Every time Charlie has been moved between prisons, itʼs been to a place where Jesse Manes has been stationed. When Jenna pulls up information from way before her sister was sent to prison for committing a crime Jenna has yet to discover, she sees that the base where her sister was arrested was the one where Manes had been an instructor for months prior. 

The realization hits her like a freight train. 

When she chose to move to Roswell to try and qualify for a job as Deputy, sheʼd done so because Charlie had been in a prison near the base. She hadnʼt paid attention to anything else; she hadnʼt had any reason to. 

A quick search tells her that Manes is no longer in Niger, but his whereabouts are not publicly disclosed. She doesnʼt need more. 

Sheʼs resilient, always has been. Sheʼs a fighter. Sheʼs a sister. And right now, sheʼs a woman with a mission. 

On the morning of the third day since she left, Jenna Cameron drives fast past the _Welcome to Roswell_ sign.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Heʼs lost track of time.

Max wakes up surrounded by darkness where before he had been inside the brightest light heʼs ever seen. It takes him a moment to realize where heʼs being kept, the secluded space making him feel trapped. Images of what should have been still flash behind his eyelids when he closes them again to center himself – a throne, lightning and love, so much love it was almost unbearable to witness. They had been happy kids growing up in a world torn between war and hope. They had been heirs of a power that was larger than anything heʼs ever been aware of. They had been chosen to represent the ideals of a universe expanding further than Antar and the Earth. 

He’s been witness to several milestones of his own people, small and big steps in evolving their society into something that could be grand. Max canʼt believe how blind heʼs been about their past, their history, their _legacy_. Michael was right – they should have dug deeper into their origins, they should have researched and tried and tested their powers while they were growing up. But Max was so scared, so terrified of what might happen to them if they were found, that he put a damper on Michaelʼs attempts at exploring their alien nature. 

He now knows how much heʼs made them miss to try to feign humanity. Heʼs now seen the wonder of their race, the sheer brilliance that shines through Michaelʼs chaotic entropy and makes Isobel dizzy whenever she dives into his psyche. He now understands the beck and call of the beacon on his back, a map to the stars he could have followed so many years ago. He now believes that Isobel holds the energy of a whole galaxy in her brain. 

But he only does so because heʼs _seen_. So much for everything he told Liz outside the caves, while Isobel was dying inside a pod. 

He now has proof. He can now believe. 

There are three of them in the same way he was taught when he was a child: a trinity powerful enough to heal, to walk on water, to survive and resuscitate. Now he understands why humans have always reveled in people like him, in their kind; now he knows why it looks like theyʼre gods sent to the Earth to help people. 

Max Evans is a god, healing hands and power bound. Isobel Evans is a goddess, wrung out from the strength of sneaking into minds. Hell, even Michael Guerin can be considered a god, what with his power over matter and his force and determination to survive in angry surroundings. 

He has to get to them.

It takes all his strength to push past the membrane surrounding the pod, keeping him sound and safe and _alive_ , but he manages to get three of his fingers out. The cold air of the cave greets his digits; he wriggles his fingertips tentatively and gets the rest of his hand out of the pod. His wrist nestled comfortably halfway out, Max weighs his options. He could remain inside the pod, cocooned in the warmth of blissful unawareness, but on the other hand he could step out and find his way to Isobel and Michael. He could try to explain everything heʼs learned during his time in his own mind – because he doesnʼt even know how to begin describing where heʼs been – and together they could find a way back to where they belong. 

A way back home, even if home is right now torn between a civil war and complete obliteration. 

Max manages to push through the membrane, first his arm and then his shoulder, until his face is out and he can breathe. He hasnʼt been aware of how much he needed air until heʼs able to inhale and exhale on his own. He gets out of the pod, the memories fading into a dull thrum in the back of his mind, ready to jump forefront if needed. He finds himself in their cave, standing stark naked in the middle of the dimly lit space where he fought Noah. Thereʼs a shirt carefully folded next to a lawn chair, and a pair of trousers waiting on the floor. He recognizes Isobelʼs touch on the clothes and Michaelʼs presence on the chair, and he can even sense Liz in the way an edition of _Anna Karenina_ is tossed aside next to the chair. Max feels deep inside that they all have been visiting, trying to keep a connection running, very much like they all did when Isobel stayed in a pod for six weeks. It makes him wonder how long heʼs been out, how they’ve covered his absence, what he’s going to face when he reaches them.

Max spends a whole minute getting dressed, trying to get a grip on his new reality. He canʼt be sure whether or not his stunt on Rosa has been successful, he canʼt know how much things have changed or if they have at all, given that there are no clocks in the cave and he canʼt even check what day it is. 

Max walks out of the cave on wobbly legs, squinting his eyes against the raging sun. Thereʼs no trace of the storm that brought their old lives to an end. Max blinks slowly, one hand before his eyes acting as a visor, and he decides that walking back to his home is the best option right now – his house isnʼt that far away and the stroll might help him focus on his next step. 

He needs to find Isobel and Michael, he has to tell them how wrong heʼs been, how loved and cherished they were; he has to explain who they are to their own world, he needs to tell Michael how sorry he is for not having given him enough credit whenever Michael talked about star hunting. 

Max begins walking slowly, gaining security in his step as he advances, the warmth of the sun bathing him under a new halo.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Like every other Wednesday, Kyle enters the precinct with a spring in his step and a box full of donuts. Heʼs supportive of a healthy lifestyle – heʼs a doctor after all – but from time to time he likes drowning in sugar during breakfast with his mother. He leaves the box on his motherʼs desk and places the coffee he hasnʼt sipped from carefully beside it.

“Morning,” he greets the few deputies lurking around the space. It feels weird to be there before his mother, but sheʼs been running around trying to minimize the impact of finding out Hankʼs glowing body and Noahʼs fried corpse within thirteen hours. Roswell isnʼt cut for the drama that could ensue if word spread about how nobody really knows what happened to Hank, not even the Sheriff Department. 

It feels weirder not to be greeted by Guerin in the drunk tank. Kyle flops down to a chair while he waits for his mother, who enters the precinct barrelling. “Kyle,” she breathes when she reaches him; he stands up to hug her briefly, his nostrils reveling in the sweet scent that heʼs always associated with home. “Iʼm sorry Iʼm late.” 

“Itʼs okay, mom,” he reassures her with a small smile. “Youʼre on time, and the coffee has cooled down a bit.” He knows how much she hates scorching hot coffee, but she hates even more when it goes cold. 

“Thanks,” she says as she opens the lid of the donut box and picks one up. “These are the best of the whole town.” Michelle eyes him suspiciously. “You usually bring some avocado toast and coffee from the Crashdown, what are you up to?” 

He laughs heartily. “Guilty as charged!” he confesses. “I wanted to spoil my mom for a change.” 

“I sense bad news coming my way,” she presses on. “Whatʼs it this time, Kyle?” 

He rubs his neck while he sips once again from his paper cup. He doesnʼt know where to begin, because he canʼt tell her the whole truth. Itʼs been a couple of days since they found Hank, and Kyle has been trying to interfere in the autopsy but although it surely took place at the hospital morgue, there are no records of the procedure. So he settles for the easier lie. “I have to work on Thanksgiving.” 

“Again?” Michelle doesnʼt conceal her disappointment. Kyle doesnʼt really blame her; heʼs been skipping Thanksgiving and any other holiday and instead working hard at the hospital several years in a row. “You promised.” 

“I know. Iʼm sorry, mom. I tried to get out of it.” 

“Now thatʼs a blatant lie, Kyle,” she calls out on him. He bushes slightly. “Well, I guess Iʼll take the shift here as well. Weʼre having so much work over these sudden deaths.” 

Kyle recognizes an opening when he sees one, and his mother is giving him one while treating herself to her second donut. He shifts in his seat, the t-shirt heʼs wearing stretching when he leans forward. His hard workout routine is paying off; heʼd like to say that heʼs doing it for himself, but the truth is that heʼd like to get a bit more of the ladiesʼ attention, now that Liz is out of the question and the rest of interesting women in Roswell are either learning to be a widower or out of town. 

“Wasnʼt Noah Bracken hit by lightning?” he asks casually. 

“He was, but Hank wasnʼt, and now the Army has snatched that case from us.” Michelle doesnʼt usually complain, but when she does itʼs a sight. Kyle watches as his mother leans in as well, hair slipping out of her tight bun, and whispers, “I shouldnʼt be telling you this.” 

“I wonʼt tell anyone,” he promises but it falls on deaf ears. His mom leans back into her chair and drinks from her coffee. 

“Still. Weird things are happening, you know. And weʼre understaffed,” she continues. 

“Jenna Cameron leaving Roswell is solely your fault,” Kyle says softly, not really intending his words to be heard. His mom does, anyway, and shoots him a sideways look. 

“What was I supposed to do?” she huffs. “Let her keep her badge? Donʼt tell me how to do my job, son. I donʼt go around telling you the best way to stitch someone up.” 

Kyle shuts up; he doesnʼt want to start a fight with his mother in the middle of the precinct, with so many officers around. When Max and Cam were working there, the air had been less charged. It had felt like coming home, despite Kyleʼs efforts to challenge Max every single moment. 

“But youʼre right, Kyle,” she continues, drinking from her now lukewarm coffee. “Cameron would be here, if she hadnʼt been so reckless. But Evans. Evans is the biggest loss.” 

Kyle nods curtly. He couldnʼt tell his mother the truth about Max Evans even if he wanted to. There are secrets better kept within the small circle of souls who know about aliens as of now. They donʼt want the group to grow, even if they have been talking about bringing Maria in – after all sheʼs now dating Guerin, or so it seems – but their parents are out of the question. Not even Isobelʼs know; Kyleʼs not about to break their trust with his own mother. 

“However, Kyle, I think you can help me with this, if you donʼt mind,” his mother is saying as she stands up. “Lemme show you something.” 

He waits as she grabs a folder and opens it in front of him. Heʼs staring at Hank, dead with a glowing handprint on his chest. Kyle wets his lips and waits, already not liking where this all is going. “Isnʼt this classified?” 

“Have you ever seen something like this?” Michelle demands instead of acknowledging his words. “The glowing print.” 

“Mom,” he begins. Kyle knows he canʼt lie to her, has never been able to. Sheʼs always been the one to see right through him.

“Tell me, Kyle,” she insists. “Have you?” 

“Yes,” he admits, defeated. It seems this isnʼt his week, or probably not even his year. First heʼs overpowered by a comatose man who vanishes into thin air in the bunker. And now his mother asking questions she already knows the answers for. 

When he and Alex had finally made it back to the Project Shepherd bunker – Alex free of putting a dead Max in a pod according to his own words, Kyle finally able to leave his motherʼs office after discovering hankʼs body – it was to an empty space raided by what could have been coyotes, but they knew better.

The copies of the research they had been doing were gone, as well as Jesse Manes.

Theyʼve spent the past three days trying to locate both the monster and the information, tracking them through a device Alex had put on the hard drives as a preventive measure. So far, they havenʼt had any success – it seems as though Jesse Manes and the data have been swallowed by a black hole.

Kyle comes back to the present, trying to make sense of what his mother is saying.

“Did you go to Manes?” 

This catches him by surprise, the alarm in his motherʼs voice at the mere thought of him going to Jesse Manes for help. Which is exactly what had happened in the beginning – right before he owned up to an ounce of decency and roughed the Master Sergeant up a bit 

“Mom?” he tilts his head to the side, scrutiny in place. “What do you know about the handprint?” 

“More than you think,” she tells him. Thereʼs a small part of him who wants to scream, but he mostly remains silent, astonished. “Iʼve known about _them_ for years. Your father wanted to protect them. We didnʼt want you involved but I guess itʼs too late now, if Jesse has already got to you.” 

Kyle shakes the haze off his head and stares at her openly. “I am in no way working with him,” he promises, the thought of what could have been enough to send him shivers up his spine. “But how do you–what–?” 

Michelle sits back down on her chair and leans into the wooden desk. “Max Evans. Isobel Evans. Michael Guerin. Your father wanted to help them.” 

Kyle feels his throat dry. He swallows around a lump, frowning, scared and thrown off. He doesnʼt know what his mother thinks she knows, but itʼs starting to become really dangerous, the way she keeps looking at him. “What about them?” he finally replies. His voice breaks just a little. 

“Theyʼre aliens, Kyle,” his mother tells him, as though talking to a small child. “But you already knew that.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Stop it right now, Guerin!” Maria is yelling when Alex enters the Wild Pony for the first time in what feels like forever, although itʼs only been some days – he hasn’t been back since he found out about Maria sleeping with Guerin, that night after discovering how much Michael had hidden from him.

Alex takes a moment to drink in the scene in front of him as he saunters toward the counter for balance. Heʼs come to the bar to talk to Maria, because itʼs been three days since the call for help he got from her. Alex didnʼt need much more to connect the dots – Michael had gone to Maria instead of coming back to the Airstream to talk to Alex. It had hurt like a bitch, more so when he had faced Michael in that cave where they had put Max to rest. Alex shakes his head to clear it and comes back to the present, where Michael is painting a new collage of blood and sweat on Mariaʼs floor. 

He can recognize Wyatt Long in the face beaten to a pulp that smiles bloody up to Michael, tall and broad clad in all black. Michael has his hands in fists held up in front of his chest, and his stance wobbles a little. Alex has the inkling that, were he to approach them right now, he would smell whiskey and acetone off Michaelʼs breathe. 

“Alex,” Maria sighs when he grips the counter with unsteady fingers. “I wish you didnʼt have to watch this.” She gets from behind the bar and attempts to make her way over the fighting couple. “I will take care of this, and then we can talk, alright?” 

Alex shakes his head again. “Lemme try,” he suggests. “Heʼs drunk, right?” 

“Both of them are,” Maria says through gritted teeth, cloth in the hand thatʼs not boring a hole in her own counter. “Itʼs been a constant these days,” and it comes out more as a whine than a complaint, as though she is exhausted of this situation already. 

Alex wants to tell her that this has only just begun – that Michael is spiraling and thereʼs not a thing they can do to stop him because the only ones capable of reigning him in are either dead or grieving. But he canʼt tell Maria that because his friend – and he still thinks of Maria as a friend after all – doesnʼt really know what has been going on in Roswell. 

Thatʼs yet another secret that Alex has to keep, along with every other painful silence heʼs got to sit through when all he wanted to do was scream the truth from the rooftops. 

“I will manage to get Guerin back into your office,” he promises. “Iʼll even lock the door.” 

“As if thatʼs going to keep him,” Maria sighs again. She lets go of the counter and wraps her arms around herself. “Last time he managed to get out.” 

Alex remembers the shock of seeing Michael at the cave, disheveled and crazy and lost, so lost that not even a beacon would have brought him home. He sighs as well. “He has this talent for picking up at locks,” he offers as only explanation before getting near to both Guerin and Long. Maria yelps when he comes close enough to have to dodge a punch from Long. “Stop it right now,” he asks politely, trying to convey as much authority as he can in only four words. 

Guerin doesnʼt seem to recognize him through the haze of blood and alcohol, and surges forward. Alex catches him mid-movement, shaky frame collapsing on top of him. Thereʼs a loaded weight in those shoulders that tremble under the barest touch. “Letʼs go, Guerin,” he says gently, ignoring Wyatt Long when he should have been paying attention. 

Heʼs so engrossed in keeping Michael upright that he doesnʼt see the hit coming. A fist collides with his jaw out of the blue, Long exclaiming victoriously, “Now you know, you bastard!” loud enough for everyone to hear. Alex doesnʼt really want to drop Michael like a dead weight on the floor, filthy already with dripping blood, but Long keeps pushing and since the first punch hit home heʼs trying for the neck and the chest. Alex doesnʼt think, his instincts take over as he lets go of Michael and turns around to face Long in a swift, graceful movement. He simply stretches his hands forward, catches some bones and flesh, twists around the edge, and in less than five seconds Wyatt Long is a sobbing mess mopping the floor with his stained shirt. “Leave, now,” he commands before turning to Michael. “Letʼs go, Guerin,” he repeats as he dusts off his jacket. “You need to sober up for the funeral.” 

"“lex,” Michael spits. Alex realizes that maybe heʼs missing a couple of teeth. “Hurts.” 

“I know it hurts,” Alex whispers softly. There are so many things he would love to say to Michael right now, so many jabs that would only leave him in pain again. He just sighs, aware thatʼs the only thing he ever does anymore near Michael. “Letʼs just get you to the office, and I will give you something for the pain. Cʼmon, Guerin,” he urges as he helps Michael off the floor. “Let me help you.” 

The bar has become eerily silent as he forces his way off the middle of the pool tables, but once he lifts his gaze from Michael and allows it to wander around, everyone seems too busy minding their own business. He waves to Maria, whoʼs staring at them with an indecipherable look in her eyes. “Be right back,” he mouths as he drags Michael to the back of the bar and into Mariaʼs office, closing the door behind him. 

The cowboy simply flops on the couch and smashes his face into a pillow. He falls asleep almost instantly, allowing Alex a moment to admire his curls, beautiful even matted by sweat and blood, and his healed hand underneath a poorly tied bandana. “Who are you trying to fool?” he mutters as he bites back the need to reach out and untangle the frayed material to see the flesh. “This isnʼt healthy.” His therapist would have a field day if he ever told her about this; not for the first moment heʼs thankful for them being aliens so he doesnʼt have to talk about _everything_ happening in his life. 

He retreats back to the main hall, where Maria has managed to appease the patrons long enough for them to be drinking and buzzing away quietly. “Hey,” he says as he sits on a stool, pretty much mimicking the same stance he had when he came to talk to her about what happened in Texas. 

“Hey yourself,” she replies, small smile on her lips. Alex can tell she is nervous. He would be, were he in her shoes, because everythingʼs so fucked up right now that even though he knows what he wants to say he isnʼt sure whether this conversation wonʼt end with them parting ways forever. “What do you want?” 

“Water for now,” he tells her. Itʼs barely noon, and although all he wants is to get drunk to forget Michaelʼs stunts and his own heartbreak, he needs to be sober for Noahʼs funeral. “Are you going to the funeral later?” 

Maria shrugs. “I wouldnʼt, under normal circumstances,” she explains. “Regina George isnʼt my favorite person in this world. But Guer seems to like her enough.” 

“He considers her his sister,” Alex says before he can stop himself, fingers around the cool glass Maria has placed before him. “Theyʼre family.” 

“Are they, for real?” 

Alex nods as he sips from the water. “Not sure about genetics,” and he hates to talk in riddles and half truths around his best friend, but itʼs necessary since it isnʼt his secret to tell. “I just know they were together in the group home when they were found in the desert. Whatever happened to them, it brought them closer.” 

Maria looks at him with guarded eyes. She leans in, hovering above him but not touching. “You really know him, donʼt you?” 

Alex closes his eyes, hurt bubbling up inside of him. But he promised himself that he wouldnʼt walk away – he would respect Michaelʼs decisions, even if they killed him, because thatʼs what real family does. Not that he should know, with his own family fuck ups, but itʼs some sort of wishful thinking. “I do,” he admits. “But thatʼs not the point here.” 

Maria finally touches his hand where it’s gripping the glass, and squeezes tight. “I didnʼt know, Alex,” she begins. The pain is evident in her voice. “If I had known–” 

“I didnʼt tell you,” Alex cuts her off. He doesnʼt want her pity, but he needs her as a friend. He has to be adult enough about this whole situation. “How would you know?” 

“But then I knew, _you_ told me,” she keeps on. “I knew and still I followed up with this and I canʼt believe I took Lizʼs word for–” 

Itʼs like sheʼs physically punched him, the way she speaks. “Liz?” 

“I might have told her Michael was your Museum Guy,” Maria confesses. “I never should have, and I shouldnʼt have followed her advice.” 

“She told you to go for it,” Alex understands now. Even though itʼs painful, he kind of sees where they both are coming from – he never told his best friends that Michael was much more than a fling or a hookup. He never even told them back while they were still young and naive that he was the guy Alex would have given up everything for. It takes him a minute to reconcile with the fact that this is his fault as much as theirs. “Iʼm sorry, Maria.” 

“Why would _you_ be sorry?” Maria sounds baffled. Alex looks up at her to see tears in her eyes. “I will break up with him, Alex. I like him, but he isn’t worth risking a lifetime friendship.” 

“You like him,” Alex smiles softly. “The thing is, Maria, that he likes you too. He must,” he continues when she tries to talk over him. “Because he left me waiting and came to you. Heʼs been through so much lately,” Alex whispers mostly to himself, but he knows Maria catches up in his words. “He needs someone stable, someone who wonʼt be ashamed.” 

“Are you ashamed of Michael?” Thereʼs a horrified pitch in her voice. Alex lowers his head again. Itʼs painful to be the bigger man and deny himself what heʼs been too scared to seek for so long. Itʼs painful to watch Michael try to be whole with someone else. 

“I am _not_ ,” he clarifies. “I was ashamed of myself, I guess.” 

“Alex.” Thereʼs a strain in her voice that he doesnʼt like, that he canʼt bear hearing. “I donʼt want this to be–” 

“I know what itʼs like to fall in love with Michael Guerin,” he says, trying to help her understand that heʼs not mad, at least not at her. Itʼs been three days since Michael left him back at the Airstream, three days since the cave and Max. Heʼs seething, but he canʼt blame Maria. If anything, he should blame himself and his always ill-timed decisions. 

“You are in love with him,” she quips. Her eye scan his face as though she can read his soul. 

“I was,” he lies, because thereʼs not past tense in his feelings; there hasnʼt been a stop to them. “For a long time. Chose to tell him way too late. He came to you instead. That means something, Maria.” 

“He said weʼd talk, but we havenʼt,” she laments. The shift in the conversation is noticeable. Alex decides not to dwell too much on how his heart is breaking. 

“Everythingʼs been intense for him lately,” he settles for saying. “Isobelʼs husband, and now Max Evans–”

“I wouldnʼt have pegged you for a gossip, Alex Manes,” she hits him playfully with the cloth. The rumor mill says that Max Evans has gone missing while searching for Noah Bracken, and that the lack of traces about his whereabouts now that his brother-in-law has been found dead means that heʼs going to show up in similar circumstances. Alex knows better, but nowʼs not the time to correct Maria. Itʼs still not his secret to tell. “But youʼre right. It seems heʼs been under so much stress.” 

“And yet he came to you.” 

“Do you know what happened to his hand?” she asks out of the blue, killing the uncomfortable silence between them. He shakes his head. 

“Maybe you should ask him,” he offers. Lies and secrets are heavy in his soul, regret in Michaelʼs hazel eyes whenever they lock gazes — Alex can’t stand to even look at his left fingers out of shame and blame, but he can’t stop himself from stealing glances whenever he’s around the cowboy. It isn’t his place to say anything, even if he wants to. He could tell her about the shed and the hammer and the hatred and the fear, but he doesnʼt think it will help her understand that heʼs not mad at her. It’s still not _just_ his secret to tell.

“Maybe I should.” 

“Be patient,” he tells her, pushing himself off the stool. “He needs a friend right now, and I can be that, but he needs to be loved more than that. Thatʼs why he came to you.” 

Maria sighs. “Alex,” she repeats. 

“Weʼll be okay,” he promises, even if his heart is breaking at the memory of Michael passed out on someone elseʼs couch. “I promise.” 

Maria doesnʼt look convinced, head turning from the door of her office to Alex, but finally she relents. “I guess Iʼll see you at the funeral?” 

Alex nods. “Just, donʼt be a stranger.” He smiles crookedly. “We all could use a friend, after all.” And with that he leaves the bar, limp ever present in his strides, his heart turned to shreds at his own feet.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Rosa stares longingly up the stairs leading out of the bunker sheʼs been staying in. After three days of almost complete isolation, sheʼs beginning to feel trapped in her own head. She can feel her blood vibrating against her skin, a chant about art and freedom and life that she doesnʼt think she can ignore any longer.

The hatch opens, and she can see a pair of shoes followed by her sister in the Crashdown uniform. Rosa sighs. “Came to see the prisoner?”

“Rosa,” Liz admonishes. Sheʼs even wearing the antennae, Rosa can see them when Liz lands on the floor with a small jump, at ease with her surroundings. Sheʼs been told that Michael Guerin and Liz worked together in the bunker under the Airstream for six weeks straight after some incident with Isobel Evans, but Rosa hasnʼt retained all the information. 

Sheʼs not really interested in anything that has to do with the person who drove her nuts during her last days on Earth, and who, apparently, was possessed to kill her in that cave. Rosa doesnʼt want to forgive, she doesnʼt want to forget. The only memories she has are from her very last moments – the way Katie and Jasmine were sprawled on the ground, broken beyond repair, the way Isobelʼs eyes had gleamed with a fiery red light, the heat against her mouth as Isobel pressed her glowing hand on Rosaʼs lips, and the void afterwards.

It had felt like falling endlessly, and although for Rosa it had only been some hours, itʼs evident that time has passed for everyone else. _Ten years_ , she often thinks to herself. _Iʼm now the baby sister._

“Rosa,” Liz is calling her name again, and she knows sheʼs spaced out. “Iʼve brought you some lunch,” she continues, waving a take-away bag from the Crashdown. Rosa shrugs.

“Iʼm not hungry,” she replies.

“Well, you have to eat, hermanita,” Liz retorts. 

“I want to go out,” Rosa begs, turning around in the bunker thatʼs not hers, facing a cot thatʼs not at all hers, surrounded by alien technology that she didnʼt even ask to acknowledge. “Quiero ver a papá, please take me to him.”

“You know I canʼt,” Liz says apologetically, leaving the bag with the food on top of the backlit table in the middle of the room. “Not until we figure out how to bring you officially back. Alex is working on that, but heʼs got so much going on right now.”

Rosa huffs. She wants to kick something, but she knows Guerin will give her a lecture if she breaks anything down here – heʼs been kind enough to allow her to stay underneath his trailer when it became obvious that she had nowhere else to go. Right after getting Max Evans into a pod – and that image is going to haunt her for eternity – Alex had discovered that his safe place had been compromised. Rosa hadnʼt understood half of what was said, something about a military bunker and some breach in security, but she got two things: Jesse Manes was on the loose, and she had no place to stay the night. Alex hadnʼt wanted her back with him at the cabin outside the woods, the same place where Jim Valenti had taken her for a detox tour before she fled, because Alex was afraid that his father would show up.

She hadnʼt comprehended why Jesse Manes was so dangerous now that they were all grown-ups, but she hadnʼt questioned Alexʼs reasons – not when he was using his authority voice, one she hadnʼt heard him use ever. Rosa had been so worried about her little brother in arms when sheʼd been alive, and now that sheʼs back she still worries about Alex. Although heʼs a military man, and heʼs been to hell and back, heʼll always be her  compi.

“Iʼm not hungry,” she repeats to the void in front of her. “I want to get out of here, Liz.”

“Iʼm sorry,” Liz replies at her back. Thereʼs rustling, so when Rosa turns around to face her sister again she sees how Liz has taken two burritos and one giant Coke out of the bag. “I canʼt let you out, not now. Soon enough, Rosa, prometido.”

Rosa knows she canʼt believe her. Thereʼs so much to do, so many things to take into account. Sheʼs been dead for a decade, and she hasnʼt aged a bit thanks to the pod Noah Bracken had put her in. She doesnʼt have any conscious memories of the man, because all their interactions have been through Isobel; she didnʼt recognize him when Liz showed her some pictures. But thereʼs a voice haunting her dreams, turning them into nightmares. She shakes her head and picks up one burrito. The smile that splits Lizʼs face in two is worth it.

“So, whatʼs the deal with Guerin and Alex?” she questions instead of the million doubts that plague her mind, while Liz leans in to sip from their shared Coke. “Iʼdʼve thought theyʼd sorted their shit by now.”

“Wait, what?” Liz whips her head up from the straw, Coke dribbling down her chin. “You knew?”

“Who didnʼt?” Rosa chirps. When sheʼs met with silence, she frowns. “You didnʼt,” she says, more a statement than a question. “Dios mío, you didnʼt!”

“I donʼt think anyone did, to be honest.” Liz chews down on her burrito and swallows before continuing. Thereʼs sauce on her lip. “I guess Max sensed something, at some point, given the connection they all share, but thatʼs all. Mikey and Alex were never–you know, it was just–”

“You can say the words, Elizabeth,” Rosa jabs at her. “Donʼt be a prude.”

“Iʼm not!” she defends herself, much to Rosaʼs delight. “I just–Youʼre only nineteen!”

“Iʼm still your big sister, Liz, tell me all the juicy details!” Her jokes are met with silence and a pensive stance from Liz.

“I donʼt know,” Liz finally sighs, after what feels like a lifetime. “I thought that they had a fling during high school, and that it didnʼt last, but now that I know some things–it seems Michaelʼs Alexʼs Museum Guy.” She pauses for effect. “It seems Alex has been pining after him for a decade, and they had something right before this whole nightmare. But Mikeyʼs with Maria now, so I donʼt know.”

Rosa holds back a witty remark. She has the feeling that it wonʼt be welcomed, not now that Liz is lost deep in her thoughts. “I think it seems easy to know.”

“Oh, it doesnʼt. Apparently Max healed Michaelʼs hand _before_ getting to you. Without Michaelʼs consent.”

“Oh, yeah, the hand healing that has had you all riled up for three days. How did Michael break it in the first place? Everyone keeps saying it looked horrible.” And by everyone, Rosa means Kyle Valenti, whoʼs been down that ladder far more times than she would have expected. Heʼs on a quest to reconcile with his past and get to know her now that heʼs aware that they are related.

“I actually donʼt know,” Liz confesses. “He never wanted to talk about it. All I know is that it happened sometime between when I last saw you and the moment Isobel went after you in the caves.”

Rosa nods her head. She doesnʼt have any more questions, not now, and even if she had, she knows that Liz wonʼt answer any. Sheʼs already dusting off her uniform and straightening her antennae. Half her burrito is forgotten over the table. “I have to leave,” she excuses herself. “I still have a shift at the café, and then itʼs Noahʼs funeral. I need to go.”

“To mourn the murderer?” Rosa canʼt help but say.

“No,” Liz talks back, already at the end of the ladder and ready to climb up. “To pay homage to the hero.” And with that, she begins her ascent. Before she gets completely out of the bunker, Liz cracks her head backwards awkwardly and stares straight into Rosaʼs eyes. “I will be back after the funeral. The test results on your blood samples should be done by then, and Alex wanted to check on you.”

She disappears into the wide open outside world, leaving Rosa completely alone with her thoughts.

Sheʼs just a bystander now, witnessing as a life she was never supposed to have slips through her fingers in a place full of secrets and whispered half-truths. Nobody talks about the mysterious disappearance of Max Evans, since they all seemed to have settled for a rumor that Isobel had helped spread – or so Liz has told Rosa. No one cares about aliens. Nobody wants answers, so nobody asks. 

No one knows about the girl who shouldnʼt be alive, rotting away in a bunker underneath the surface with only her memories and the suffocating pain emanating from the handprint she still has on her skin, proof that sheʼs alive and that he died. Proof that religion had one thing down right.

The wraith walks among the living.

“This town is haunted,” she speaks to the silence surrounding her when her sister leaves, closing the hatch in her wake and pulling the trailer back on top of it with the force of a truckʼs engine. “And I am the ghost.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The casket is closed. Isobel sighs as she allows her hand to slide over the rich wood. Sheʼs still alone in the church, although the service is only forty-six minutes away. Sheʼs waiting for her mother to show up any moment now – Isobel has managed to ditch all her efforts to make her feel better in the wake of finding out about Noah. Isobel canʼt resent her mother for that, since she can never know half of the story, but she needs to be alone for a while and her mother has respected it.

Not for the first time, Isobel muses about how it must be to have an overbearing mother who fusses around her and worries too much. Sheʼs the one to blame for Annʼs behavior ever since Isobel hit puberty – with their powers on the fritz while their teenage selves learned to accommodate to their new bearings, Max hadnʼt wanted to risk anything. She was forced to distance herself from her own parents, from the people who helped her and took her in when she had nothing. Still, she resents her parents for not reaching out to Michael, for leaving him behind. Itʼs tough to constantly feel torn. 

Max and Michael. Theyʼre the crux of everything for her. 

Max isnʼt around to be blamed for her pain. Sheʼs been told that Michael put him in one of the pods, since she hadnʼt been able to be there. Noah had spoiled it for her as well, just another way for her late husband to fuck her over. Max is gone, although she can still feel a hum in the back of her mind, a hum that Liz has told her Max didnʼt feel when Isobel was in the pod. It gives her hope while she lies to everyone, her mother and father included, and tells them that sheʼs destroyed over the fact that Max is missing. 

Lies and more lies, the main pain in her soul rippling through her whenever she thinks that Noah has taken everything from her – her agency, her life, her brothers. Max is in a pod and Michael –

Michaelʼs entering the church in his big black cowboy hat, Maria DeLuca pushing him through the doors. Isobel sighs again as she steps off the altar and walks toward the entrance to greet them. When she reaches them, she stops at an armʼs length, taken aback by how bad Michael looks. 

Heʼs swaying a bit, and the odor tells her heʼs already been drinking. If it werenʼt for the smell, she could have guessed his inebriation from his dark, bloodshot eyes. Isobel lives in a permanent state of worry about him, ever since he came back to Roswell at eleven and got pushed back into the system that had separated them for those first four years. Although sheʼs glad that he has Maria now, despite Isobelʼs own feelings about her, Michael doesnʼt seem a bit happy when Maria is around. Isobel lies to herself, trying to convince her worries that itʼs just because of Max and that when Max comes back to life – when they bring him back – Michael will come back to his usual self. 

Underneath the lies, Isobel knows the truth, though. Michael has never been happy, not really, until Alex Manes entered the picture. He had been sulky and angry, and suddenly Isobel had felt hope and future in his mind when she dared to risk it and walk through it. After the summer when she killed Rosa, that changed. 

Michael, she muses to herself as she finally takes the last step and hugs him, is his usual self when heʼs drunk and lost. The bubbling hope had been a glitch in the system that supports his permanent anger. 

“Iʼm glad youʼre here,” she whispers into Michaelʼs curls when he hugs her back. “Thanks for coming.”

“Anything for you, Iz,” he replies. Thereʼs no slur in his voice, but the hint of acetone in his breath in enough for Isobel to understand how much heʼs hurting without entering the chaotic realm of his mind.

For the last three days, Isobel has wondered how Michael was coping. Sheʼs barely been out of her house at all – except when she had to go to the morgue at the hospital to recognize Noahʼs electrified body, as if she hadnʼt seen it the first time. Afterwards, her mother had come pick her up and sheʼs been trapped between her own walls, sorting through Noahʼs belongings and explaining why their pictures were busted while Ann organized the funeral.

Itʼs the first event she hasnʼt planned herself in a long time, and Isobel couldnʼt be more at a loss.

Michael had hidden from her the whole time. After their shared experience with Max in the void of black, Isobel hasnʼt heard from him. Sheʼs tried calling the human way, reaching out to him by phone, but Michael always lets her go to voicemail, so she wasnʼt sure if he would actually show up –if only to check that Noah is effectively dead. It isnʼt a surprise to see him with Maria – the rumor mill has reached Isobel too – but she wants the only brother she has left to be happy, and thereʼs an aura of despair around him. They had talked about family and Caulfield briefly in between Noah and Rosa, so Isobel knows heʼs partly grieving the loss of his mom, but it doesnʼt take a genius to understand that the tether Michael had to this planet, _before_ , is almost severed from his darkened soul.

He doesnʼt say anything else, and Maria helps him sit on a bench by the back of the church. Isobel goes back to the altar, and itʼs there her mother finds her ten minutes later, with the aisle full of people searching for a seat and ready to give her their condolences. She just wants everything to end, because she doesnʼt like the idea of having to keep on lying about who sheʼs crying for.

“How are you feeling, dear?” Ann asks, her long blonde hair falling in waves at her back. Isobel wants to tell her that sheʼs feeling self-conscious in her black dress, right above the knees, and her own hair in a neat ponytail that sways from left to right when she walks – she never thought she’d be the lamenting widow, and it’s the first time in her adult life that she doesn’t feel like she fits in. She’s just lost in her grief, although it isn’t grief for her husband – she’s mourning something else she can’t share with her mother.

“Iʼve been better,” she admits. “This is hard.”

Her mother gives her a pitying look and an awkward pat on the shoulder. She proceeds to scan the crowd from their spot on the altar, where Isobel is getting ready to give her speech – something halfway between heartfelt and sickening, since sheʼs thrown up twice while thinking about it, and twice more while actually writing it down. “Ew,” Ann says, bringing Isobelʼs focus to the present. “One would have thought _he_ would have had a bit more class and not come at all.”

Isobel follows her motherʼs gaze to land her eyes on Michael, fidgeting in his seat and trying not to flinch whenever Maria touches him. Somehow, the way her mother talks about Michael – has been talking about him ever since high school and their blatant refusal to take him in because _heʼs got a foster home and if heʼs living in his truck itʼs probably because heʼs trouble_ – sets fire inside of her, and she turns to her mother so fast that her head is spinning quicker than her ponytail.

“Stop it right now,” she says, voice filled with authority and derision. “Stop talking about Michael like that. Enough.”

“Honey, I donʼt think youʼre in the right mind–”

“I said _enough_ ,” her voice is vicious. She revels in the fact that her mother looks like sheʼs slapped her across the face. “I know you donʼt recognize him, but Michael is my brother. He was there at the group home when you adopted us,” she keeps on, not allowing her mother to interrupt. “Heʼs the troubled child you left behind. So no, donʼt go talking about him like that. Iʼve already lost a husband, we donʼt know where Max is,” yet another lie burning in her tongue, “and I will _not_ allow anyone to talk about my other brother like that.” 

Isobel watches as realization dawns on Ann Evans, the perfect housewife whoʼs spent the past twenty years of her life fiercely denying that her actions had any impact on a childʼs life. “I didnʼt know,” she says apologetically, but Isobel is having none of that. 

“That doesnʼt make up for the fact that youʼve been treating him like shit and Iʼve allowed it.” Isobel grips the coffin with her manicured hands until her knuckles are white. “But thatʼs going to change, now.” 

Her mother nods mutely, and goes to sit front row with her father, whoʼs looking at them with a frown. Isobel ignores them both, instead walking to stand in front of the crowd when the priest signals for the choir to begin singing so the ceremony can start. 

She catches Lizʼs eyes as she sits with Arturo, both dressed in black and wearing matching grieving looks. Isobel knows that Liz is the only one apart from Michael that can get what sheʼs feeling right now. She sees Kyle entering a bit late with Sheriff Valenti in tow, seemingly distressed with hands shaking nervously. By the end of the church, she spots Alex, sitting on his own looking down as though heʼs praying. 

She wants to address them, not sure if she wants to reassure them that everything will turn out right in the end or if she needs them to tell her that this time they win. They get to have their happy ending. 

The ceremony begins, and she feels the pull of dissociation where she gets to leave her body and forget anything thatʼs happening – one of the side effects of having Noah in her mind for so long. 

Isobel doesnʼt remember half of it, only bits and pieces of the priestʼs words and her own speed, and suddenly sheʼs sitting sandwiched between her parents, cheeks tear-stricken as the choir sings about everlasting love even from the afterlife. If only they knew. 

Her pain becomes anger when she thinks about everything Noah has taken from her – sheʼs now the widow of Roswell, a beacon and an example, but she only feels hatred. Because of Noah sheʼs spent the last ten years thinking Michael was a murderer, and thatʼs something she has to learn to forgive herself for before she can ask for atonement. But also because of Noah she doesnʼt know who she really is, and sheʼs lost half of her soul thatʼs now sitting in a pod she still has to visit. 

Noah gave her wings, but they were loaded with wax as he sent her flying toward the sun. 

The haze of the funeral drifts into the haste of the reception in the house she shared with Noah, people offering wishes and advice that she doesnʼt need. She needs a punching bag. She needs a glass of wine. She needs a gun and a target. 

She needs Noah to be alive so she can kill him with her bare hands and the melting force of her brain. 

Isobel doesnʼt notice something is wrong until sheʼs faced with Michael clutching his head with his right hand, the left one in an ugly bandana. She realizes then that sheʼs swaying in place and the people in front of her are swimming under her sight. 

“Whatʼs going on?” Michael asks at the same time as she feels a scream growing from the deepest of her mind, the place where sheʼs pushed Max and their shared connection. 

Isobel grabs Michael by the hem of his shirt and pushes him into the nearest room, which happens to be Noah’s in-home office. She barely manages to close the door at her back before the pain hits her in waves once again. Bile threatens to rise in her throat, and sheʼs shuddering. Thereʼs a pull in her mind, a slow but firm prodding that tugs at her heartstrings and plucks at the edges of her mind. She can tell Michael feels it too, because heʼs pale and shivering as well, and in her mind she can feel him yelling into the chaos as the pain consumes him.

In the midst of their convulsions, Isobel doesnʼt realize her hands have begun to glow – red, angry – until she hears two confused yelps by the door that didnʼt actually close properly, matching the fear sheʼs got conquering her insides.

“Isobel?”

“Michael?”

When both of them turn around, they meet Ann and Maria, who are staring at them bewildered. “What does this all mean?” Maria manages to ask before Ann Evans collapses by her side, fainting under the stress of watching the sheer unhuman nature of her own daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter starts with an off-voice, very much the same as the show itself. This chapter is Liz's voice.
> 
> I know it's been a while, and I have finally accepted that life keeps getting in the way of my posting/writing schedule. Therefore, I can't promise weekly updates, since even though I have written up until chapter 7, the chapters have to go through editing and then posting. I promise I am still writing, and it looks like it's going to be at least 13 chapters long, but my initial idea of wrapping it up before the actual second season premieres has to be abandoned. At some point, this will become canon divergence.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back! It's been a good month and a half since the last update, and I can't promise it won't be the general pace for this, now that life has proven to be a little bit of a bitch. But we'll survive, and this story will be finished, although maybe it will be a bit shorter than initially expected.
> 
> Lovely, lovely [brightloveee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee) has been holding my hand through this, taking time off her own business to actually help me with this, and I couldn't be more thankful. Without you, any of this would make any sense.
> 
> I don't own anything, except for my mistakes.

> When we were little, Max was the bookworm, always bragging about reading stories that were far beyond our comprehension. The moment he learned English, he jumped forward and forgot to take me along with him. He was always one step ahead, always setting the rules, even when Michael found his way back to us. Even then, it was all about never being seen. About blending in. About never standing out. Every time I got reminded of a certain Charles Dickens quote, _we forge the chains we wear in life_. How fitting, given how our lives have turned out to be. Fitting enough, that I’m now breaking out of this golden psychic prison Noah put me in.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Everything becomes a blur afterwards.

One second Maria is staring at Isobelʼs hands glowing like freaking lanterns and the next Alex is ushering both Mrs Evans and herself out of the space and telling everyone to go because emotions are running wild and the family needs to be alone for a while. 

Maria still has to understand when Alex Manes became the self-assured man whoʼs now closing the front door after the last guest has left, under the record time of ten minutes. Isobel and Michael have yet to come out of the office, but Maria isnʼt sure whether or not sheʼd like to face Michael right now. There are so many things she doesnʼt know, and when she looks around she realizes that she must be the only one, along with the Evans. 

Liz is standing worried at the office door, body half inside while she mutters something; Arturo is nowhere to be seen, so maybe Alex has sent him away as well. Kyle Valenti isnʼt around, but Maria has an inkling that he is in on the secret, whatever it is that Michael has been keeping from her. 

It hurts to understand that, no matter what, Michael trusts Alex more than he trusts her, even though sheʼs been there through his drunk antics for the best part of a decaying decade. 

“Whatʼs going on?” she demands, after helping Mrs Evans to sit on a couch while her husband fawns over her. Maria walks to the office, but sheʼs shoved out unceremoniously by Liz. “Hey! Iʼm right here! And I want to know!” 

“Not now, Maria,” Liz tells her without even looking at her from over her shoulder. Maria doesnʼt recognize her best friend in the cold voice she hears. “Come back with Mr and Mrs Evans. We will tell you all in due time.” 

“And when will that be?” Maria presses on. “When you have a plausible reason for Regina Georgeʼs hands being a fucking grill and for Michaelʼs hand being normal again?”

“You noticed,” Liz mutters. This time, she turns around to face Maria fully; there are tears brimming in her eyes and her hands are shaking. 

“Of course she noticed,” Alex groans from inside the office. When Maria looks over past Liz, she can see him with his hand on Michaelʼs shoulder, squeezing lightly. Isobel is sitting on a stool, her hands finally back to normal, but she looks crestfallen and completely shaken. “Sheʼs not an idiot.” 

“No, Iʼm not,” Maria says. She has to bite back the rest of her words when Michael looks up, the look in his eyes disarming her – thereʼs a shadow cast over his irises, in a way that makes it even more difficult for her to read his aura. Not like sheʼs been able to do so in the past, because Michael Guerin has some kind of protection over him that makes it near impossible for Maria to get a hold of emotions except when heʼs wasted beyond belief. “Is anyone gonna tell me?” 

“We should,” Isobel says when the rest remain silent. “You were right, Michael. Enough secrets. Thereʼs no point now that I’ve freaked my own mother out.” 

“And what are we going to do, tell your parents?” Michael protests, ignoring Maria. Heʼs looked away from her to a blank point on the opposite wall, where heʼs staring without seemingly seeing anything. “Now, when we didnʼt back when Rosa happened? Why now? Just make something up, you are really good at lying.” 

“Hey, that was uncalled for!” Liz exclaims at the same time as Isobel yelps, “You know it wasnʼt the same, Michael!” 

“It wasnʼt?” Michael snarls as he focused once again on Isobel. Maria feels a coldness creeping up her spine at the wilderness she can see there. “When it was _me_ the murderer, there was no point in telling your parents that we were aliens, but now that itʼs _your_ husband the criminal and _your_ brother the stiff, now you wanna say something.” 

A heavy, pregnant silence falls upon them all. Maria feels like sheʼs watching a tennis match, the way she feels something building up in turns in both Isobel and Michael. There are so many things sheʼs heard in the past few seconds that sheʼs like to address, but one thing stands out. “Murderer? Criminal? _Stiff_?” 

“That all you got?” Michael huffs. “Listen, I canʼt do this anymore. Do whatever you want to do, Isobel,” the name rolls derisively out off his tongue. Maria cringes. “Iʼm going to go see Max. Make sure nothingʼs changed but I doubt it,” he continues, signaling his head. “Heʼs back, and you can feel it as well as I do.” 

“Michael, wait,” Alex says, but Michaelʼs already standing up, shrugging him off and putting his cowboy hat on. “We have to—” 

“Well, I donʼt _have_ to do anything!” he bursts out. “Iʼve had enough of this! Enough of not being _enough_! Max gave me this,” he lifts his left hand, and Maria can clearly see the gleam of unblemished skin where there was scar tissues before. “He told me to stop living in the past. Thatʼs what Iʼm doing!” 

He stomps past Liz and Maria, shoving them out of his way without even touching them. She follows him after a beat, without sparing a glance to the rest of the gang still shouting in the office. 

She springs past Isobelʼs parents, and it strikes her to see that, while Mrs Evans seems shaken by what they both saw before, Mr Evans has his features schooled into what Maria thinks itʼs a mask behind which he can hide everything heʼs feeling. Maria doesnʼt give it a second thought, instead sauntering outside before Michael can do something really stupid – like trying to leave in a car that isnʼt his, since he was so gone on alcohol that sheʼs driven them both up to Isobelʼs after the ceremony. 

“Hey, Guer!” she calls out as she sets foot outside. Michael is leaning against Lizʼs SUV, black cowboy hat in place and a frown. Maria stops abruptly before colliding against him, she wasnʼt expecting him so close to the building. “Hey.” 

He doesnʼt even look up. Maria takes a couple of steps toward him, and from a close-up she can see heʼs trembling. “Michael,” she tries again, this time reaching out and touching his arm. He recoils, jumping backwards like a wild animal, but he looks up. “Iʼm here,” Maria assures him. “Iʼm really here for you. Not going anywhere.”

“Really?” 

He looks lost, like a small child abandoned in the middle of the night to fend for himself. With a pang of sudden, painful realization, Mariaʼs sure that Michaelʼs life has been like that – walking naked on a dark road at seven, tossed around by the system during his childhood, kicked out and left alone in his teenage years, deemed an outcast by everyone, including herself. 

Maria recalls what sheʼs just heard, what she can interpret from the words pronounced during a heated argument. She finds thatsheʼs not scared, maybe a little surprised, but not terrified of what Michael is. Because heʼs always been Michael Guerin, the guy whose origins no one knew for real; him being an alien is just casting a bit of light on his past, not shadowing his future. 

“So, alien, huh?” she settles for saying. He searches her face for some signal that sheʼs going to bolt, but Maria has no intention of walking away. She understands what itʼs like to be left alone at your lowest. Sheʼs not doing it to Michael. 

“Yeah,” he complies, looking away. “Arenʼt you scared?” 

“Why should I?” Maria smiles, hugging him. Michael doesnʼt budge and she takes it as a win. “Youʼre still Michael Guerin. That hasnʼt changed because you werenʼt born in this planet.” Sheʼd be damned if she didnʼt believe that humans werenʼt alone in the universe, although processing the fact that Isobel and Michael – and most probably Max as well – were from outer space might take some time. Mainly because sheʼll need time to get over the anger rising inside of her at the mere thought that Liz and Alex, her best friends – her _family_ – have seemingly been in on the secret and they havenʼt told her. 

Maria feels like an idiot when she remembers the shame she felt after outing Michael to Liz during their tête-à-tête because she realized it hadnʼt been her place to tell Liz that Michael had been Alexʼs Museum Guy. Right now, that conversation plays very differently in her mind, knowing that Liz had been hiding such a secret from her. 

“You know, I havenʼt really told anyone,” Michael confesses. Mariaʼs still holding him tight, his hat tickling her temple. “Everyone who knows, itʼs because they found out or Max told them or Isobel did. Not me. I never had the chance to actually explain myself.” 

“Well,” Maria replies, determined to get past her own anger because her life is already complicated enough with her mother and their issues, and squeezes Michael awkwardly. Sheʼs told herself that this, whatever they might be in time – the couple she doesnʼt dare to wish, the friends she hopes theyʼll remain – this is worth every bump in the way, if only to get the chance to feel _cherished_ , important in the way she felt when Michael comforted her after she left her mom in the care home, when they shared a passionate night in the desert under the impression that they were lost. 

Maybe they are, now. 

“Iʼm right here,” she continues. “Iʼd love to know more about this.” 

Michael sags under her touch. For a second she thinks heʼs not going to say anything, but after a few long, tense moments, Michael begins speaking about impossible things that Maria knows, without having to reach out to read him, are true.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The first thing he notices when he wakes up is that his limbs are restrained. Both his arms are tied to the bed, leaving him in a mock stance of a crucified Christ, while his legs are bound by the ankles, effectively keeping him from moving. He tests the restraints – they feel like shackles but they wonʼt budge. He doesnʼt try any further, instead saving his energy for a moment when he absolutely needs it.

Jesse Manes can be trapped, but heʼs far from defeated. 

His eyes hurt when he opens them against the blinding light above his head. Heʼs lying on what feels like a hospital bed; the whole room smells like antiseptic, and there are no windows from where he can see. Jesse closed his eyes once again, trying to make sense of his memories and what he already knows so he can piece together where he currently is. 

He remembers aiming and firing against Kyle Valenti, the rightful son of his father, turning against him just like Jim had done. Then he remembers a stab on the neck, his own body collapsing, and darkness while Valenti spoke – or was it his own youngest – before everything went blank and silent. Jesse frowns, but his forehead doesnʼt crease and his facial muscles donʼt even budge. At some point, he heard Flintʼs voice, but he canʼt be sure. His son wouldnʼt have tied him to a bed after rescuing him from his own bunker. 

“Keep researching that,” he hears from outside the room. The door he hasnʼt noticed before is now ajar, and he can see the familiar back of Flintʼs uniform. Jesse feels hope bubbling up. His loyal minion will most probably take him out of this place, whatever it is. “I will make sure we donʼt have any unwelcome interruption.” 

Flint turns and enters the room, his military stance showing in the way he walks towards the bed. Jesse wants to smirk, but his lips donʼt move up. Heʼs beginning to panic at the realization that he doesnʼt seem to have any control over his movements, but he clamps that fear down reassuring himself that Flint is going to get him out and then heʼll be back to normal. 

“Hi, Dad,” he greets, stopping next to Jesseʼs right hand. He leans in to inspect the restraint, fingering it lightly before hooking his index finger between the loops and tugging at it. He seems satisfied when the shackle doesnʼt give. “I see youʼre finally awake.” 

Jesse struggles to reply, but finds once again that he canʼt move his lips. His whole body seems on lockdown, betraying him when he should be firing commands and making Flint look less smug and confident than he does right now. In fact, Jesse realizes, Flint looks like heʼs in charge of whateverʼs going on. And if thereʼs something that Jesse Manes hates more than being talked back is not being the first in command. 

“Donʼt fret, Dad,” Flint keeps talking. “I know it feels weird, not being able to talk. Itʼs a side effect from the drugs you were shot with. Weʼre still investigating what happened and who did it, since you canʼt tell us for now. We suppose it was Valenti, but we canʼt rule Alex out or even another external agent. You surely have several powerful enemies.”

Jesse pulls at the restraints, making them clink and clatter. Heʼs beginning to grow frantic; he doesnʼt like not being able to move on his own, and he has the inkling that the shackles are in place for something more than keeping him safe – he knows his son, after all, and Flint has always been the one to grow more similar to Jesse himself. He knows how his son thinks. He tries to speak, mumbled sounds getting out of his dry lips; he realizes with rising distress that thereʼs saliva drooling from his mouth. If he werenʼt a condecorated military man with so many tours under his belt, heʼd say he was afraid of whatʼs going on with him. 

“What now, Dad?” Flint asks, turning to check the chain at the other side of his bed. It doesnʼt budge, the same way the first one didnʼt. “Donʼt try to speak, Iʼve told you that. I suppose youʼre scared, but we will take good care of you.” 

Jesse blinks, since itʼs the only body function he seems to have kept in his state. His mind is running circles around what happened back at the bunker, heʼs almost certain that it was Valenti who shot him but then Flint came along – Jesse blinks again, one thought forming in his already exhausted brain. 

His son didnʼt have access to that bunker, he never had. Jesse had expected Alex to override his own access permissions, and therefore he had had to resort to old tricks learned from years in the desert with nothing more than his own imagination – Alex has grown up with technology and heʼs still young, clumsy despite his brilliance. But Alex couldnʼt have banned Flint from entering the bunker because Flint _never_ had access to begin with. And Jesse is sure that, after the disaster that Caulfield turned out to be, Alex hasnʼt contacted his older brother to chit chat about family legacies and Project Shepherd. 

Jesseʼs eyes follow Flint as he positions himself by the end of the bed. His son seems so self-assured, standing tall in the middle of the brightly lit room. “I bet you have tons of questions,” Flint says casually, although thereʼs nothing casual about the way heʼs tugging at the straps holding his ankles. “Everything will be explained, Dad, in due time.” 

Heʼs about to say something else – Jesse can see it from the way his lip curls, the way his nose scrunches as though heʼs about to smell something foul, the way his teeth flash between his lips. But when Flint actually leans forward to keep his mysterious tirade, the door to the room opens with a loud burst, and a blonde girl, not older than twenty-five or twenty-six, barges inside. “Great,” she says as greeting. “I see Iʼm not really _that_ late.”

“Oh, you arenʼt at all,” Flint says, voice smooth and completely different from the sounds Jesse is used to elicit from him – hisses and grunts and pained yelps transformed with time and discipline into acquiescence and obedience and pliance. “Dad, you remember Charlie Cameron, right?”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Phil Evans always knew that he couldn’t have children. When he was barely a child himself, he passed through a severe case of mumps that went untreated for so long that they caused him permanent infertility. When he met Ann, during their college years at Stanford, he was crystal clear about it when the topic came up – when they were becoming too serious for just a fling – and Ann simply looked up at him from her milkshake and smiled sweetly. “Well,” she’d said, her eyes never leaving his, “then we’ll adopt. I hardly see a problem there.”

He’d known she was the one in that very moment. He’s been in love with her for half his life, and they’ve been through so many things together. They’re as strong as they can be, and yet they aren’t prepared for what’s brewing in between the walls of their own house.

“I have to leave,” he hears Liz Ortecho say in the office, loud enough to reach them when their previous conversations had been muffled by whispers. “I will check up on you all later, okay? But right now it’s better if I go with my father.”

Phil squeezes Ann’s hand in an attempt to calm her, but her limbs are still shaking when Liz walks out of the office and shoots them an apologetic look. “Mr Evans, Mrs Evans, I’m so sorry for your loss,” she states, shrugging awkwardly. “I have to go. Now. My father also sends his apologies for leaving early.”

“It’s okay, darling,” Ann speaks through her nerves, still trembling. “We understand.”

“Bye, Liz,” Phil says as well. “Give your father our kindest regards.”

“Will do,” and with that she’s out of their house. Phil can see her running to a black car that’s waiting with the ignition on, jumping inside with a swift movement, before the vehicle roars to life and rolls away.

“Phil,” Ann turns to him when the whispers resume in the office. “You said they wouldn’t even know.” There’s a lingering accusation in her words, a tone Phil hasn’t heard in a long while, not since their last big argument back when they had been deciding whether or not to purchase a bigger house. “You said they’d have _normal_ lives! You said the third kid wouldn’t be harmed!”

“Hush now, darling,” Phil tries to appease her. Ann shifts relentless under his grip. “They’re going to hear you.”

“Isobel’s hand was glowing, Phil! _Glowing_! How am I supposed to keep quiet when she’s obviously hurting and I can’t help her? Where’s Max, huh? Do you even know where your son is?” Ann’s beginning to sound as desperate as Phil feels. He can’t tell her to calm down any longer, not when the murmurs have quieted over the office and their daughter is peeking out of the door with a frown that speaks volumes about her fear. Isobel blinks and disappears behind the door once again, causing Ann to sob louder. “Now she won’t even face us! What have we done, Phil?”

“I don’t know, darling,” he whispers. “Jim assured me they would never know. That, away from the collective, they’d be safe.”

“He also told you that the third boy would be adopted into a wealthy family who would take care of him, and you know that wasn’t true!” Ann finally lets go of his hand and tries to stand up, only to stumble back down on the couch where she was sitting. “We don’t know where Max is, and Max was acting so weird these past days. During all of Isobel’s rehab time. I’m worried about him, Phil, I don’t know where my son is! Why wouldn’t he attend his brother-in-law’s funeral?”

“Because he’s not in Roswell right now,” comes the reply in the voice of Isobel, shaky and shallow but still hers, a hint of determination that’s always been one of her most noticeable traits. “There are some things you don’t know,” she goes on. Phil looks up at her; Isobel’s flanked by Alex Manes on her right, and a weary looking Michael Guerin on her left. Michael’s looking so tired that Phil can see Maria DeLuca trying to hold him upright. He knows all of those kids’ names because they’ve grown up in Roswell, but also because they’ve been part of the threat or the salvation of his own children, and somehow he’s been attuned to them.

“Are you sure?” he finally says, when his daughter doesn’t keep talking. “Where’s Max, for real, Isobel? What’s happened to him?”

“He’s dead,” Michael deadpans. “Bet you weren’t expecting that one.”

“Michael!” Isobel shrieks. Phil feels Ann tensing by his side, and he turns to her to make sure she doesn’t faint. “Could you please stop being so blunt? He’s not dead. We’re bringing him back!”

“Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Alex suggests. “I have an inkling you’re scaring your parents right here, Isobel.”

“Right,” Isobel says. She squints her eyes, and Phil feels the pressure of something pushing at his conscience. He fights it back until he realizes it’s Isobel trying to pass through their mental barriers.

“Stop right now, Isobel,” he commands in his best authoritative voice. “I will not allow mind tricks in this house.”

“What?” she whines, too taken aback to point out that it’s, in fact, _her_ house. “Mind tricks?”

“They know,” Michael realizes with a startled yelp. “Iz, your parents _know_.”

“That can’t be possible,” Isobel whispers, looking at them so defeated that Phil has to intervene.

“Honey,” he begins, reaching back to Ann’s hand and stretching out his fingers to try and grasp Isobel’s, but she just recoils. He’d be lying to himself if he said it doesn’t hurt him a little. “You’re going through a difficult moment in your life,” he tells her. “Things are going to change, and it’s probably for the best if you weren’t on your own these days –”

“How are things going to change, Dad?” she questions. “Can you tell me how _exactly_ things are going to change now that Noah’s dead and Max – Max –”

“Your hands were glowing,” Ann decides to quip. “I’m sure you hadn’t experienced it before, and we’re here with you for this, honey. We support you.”

“Wait a minute,” Michael intervenes, stepping in front of Isobel, between her and Phil and Ann, with a protective aura around him. Phil remembers him now, from the group home, all curls and frightened eyes, painting the walls with reds and despair. He was a fighter then, and he is a fighter now. “Iz, I think they _think_ you're finding out right now.”

“Arenʼt you, though?” Phil asks with a thread of voice. “Are you telling me you knew who you were before today?” 

He sees as Isobel lifts one hand to her lips in an attempt to conceal her surprise. If heʼs reading her right, he might say that his daughter has known about her origins for as long as she’s been in this world. 

“Isobel?” Ann says. “Honey.” 

“But we knew,” Isobel whispers. “How on Earth do _you_ know? Weʼve been so careful!” There’s a hint of the Isobel he knows and loves in the way she stomps her feet on the floor, lips thinned in a white line and fingers grabbing at the hem of her dress in a pattern she only draws when she isn’t getting what she wants. 

“Jim Valenti,” Phil tells her, and the name brings back memories he thought he’d buried long ago, along with the very same Sheriff who once dared to defy Jesse Manes. “He asked us to save the kids he’d found out on a curb in the dead of the night,” he continues, mind still fogged by the memories of that call out of the blue, twenty years ago. “So we helped, in all the capacity we could. We’re sorry we didn’t take you all with us,” he continues, nodding toward Michael, who looks as stricken as Phil feels. “He promised us he’d take good care of you.”

Without saying a word, the young man with the cowboy hat and the swagger wobbles his way out of Isobel’s house, hand wiping away at his cheeks, not heeding Isobel’s whimpers as she calls for him to come back, to not walk away in that state. When Michael doesn’t turn around, instead thundering out of the patio, Isobel faces them with anger and disappointment in her eyes before focusing on the mantle on top of the fireplace. The newly placed frames wave and vibrate, but they don’t break. She doesn’t say a thing for a while, shaking with ire and something Phil can’t pinpoint; at her silence, her friends slip away wordlessly as well, drifting away with hushed condolences and the occasional squeeze on her arm. When it’s just the three of them, Isobel finally turns back to them and speaks, words measured and lips tight, letting her wrath unfurl tenfold before them.

“Get out of my house,” she growls, lowly and intently. “I can’t stand seeing you now. Knowing you abandoned _my brother_ because he was too much work. Knowing how you left him in that hole when he was just a child. Get out. _Now_.”

Phil helps Ann to her feet, both ashamed and scared of Isobel’s heat, of the pain radiating from her body, and they scamper away out of the house they both helped her choose, when she was planning her wedding to Noah.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Kyle pulls up close to the Crashdown entrance door, checking on the rearview mirror that Arturo and Liz are calm enough to leave the car. The old man had been a bit shaken after the ruckus at Isobel’s house, and Kyle didn’t want any more stress added to his already feeble health. Liz had sprinted out of Isobelʼs house right after Maria and Guerin had stomped outside – Kyle has seen them from his spot inside his own car. Heʼd had the inkling that Liz would want to go back home with her father. He sighs before looking back into the rearview mirror. His eyes catch Liz’s, who’s looking back at him with a mirrored worry in them. They have so much to talk about – the incident at Isobelʼs, the people walking out gossiping about how she had lost here mind after Noah was hit by lightning. They canʼt, though, not with Arturo in the car and Michelle attentively trying to catch every little detail of their hushed conversations.

“Here we are,” he announces. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay for a while?” He gestures between his mother, sitting on the passenger seat and turned back to face both Arturo and Liz from an awkward angle, and himself. 

“No, no, thanks, _mijo_ ,” Arturo assures him with a tired voice. "I just need to lie down for a bit. Too many emotions.” His English, heavily accented even though he’s been living in Roswell for well longer that Kyle has been alive, is slurred by exhaustion and something Kyle can’t put a finger on. “Vamos, cariño,” he says, patting his daughter’s arm. “We should climb down. Kyle and Michelle might want to go back home.” 

“I think we can spare some time,” Michelle tells them, already unbuckled and fumbling with the door handle. “I really don’t like the idea of leaving you after such a stressful event.” Kyle hears what his mother isn’t saying, the underlying truth unspoken in her words. _He could have a relapse_ , he thinks to himself. The look in Liz’s eyes tells him he’s not the only one who believes that. 

“Shouldn’t you be checking on Isobel?” Arturo asks as he climbs down the SUV and steps onto the street. Liz mimics his movements and closes the door with a little more force than needed. She winces and shoots Kyle an apologetic smile. “It looked like she was having a panic attack.” 

“I already gave her some prescriptions and orders to lie down and rest,” Kyle lies. He knows he can’t tell him the truth – Arturo shouldn’t know about aliens or government conspiracies or resurrecting powers. Yet, it kills Kyle that they can’t tell Arturo that his oldest daughter is back to life. “Now I would like to do the same with you, and since I know you, I want to make sure you go to straight to rest instead of to the kitchen, Mr Ortecho.” 

“We all could use some churro pancakes,” Arturo offers. Kyle shrugs, getting out of his car. “I promise I will follow your advice. But first let me treat you to some churro pancakes as my Thanksgiving gift.” 

It takes Kyle a moment to realize that it’s actually Thanksgiving week; he’s been so busy with the hospital, his patients, alien shenanigans and holding it all together after Max’s death that time has slipped past him. 

“Maybe you can stay for a bit?” Liz asks hopefully, and it’s all Kyle can do when his own mother steps out of the car and follows Arturo to the door, where a sign reading Cerrado por defunción is hanging from the knob, held up on the inside of the window. “Dad’s right. We all could use some pancakes.” Her eyes are begging him to stay; Kyle knows her enough to feel when she’s also asking for help without voicing it out. The way she walks around her father, overprotective and alert, is betrayed by her anxious stance and the constant wriggling of her hands ever since Isobel’s burst and their subsequent fleeing, Kyle offering to drive Liz and her father back home before things got too out of hand for them.

“Okay,” he acquiesces, his mother nodding along. “Just for a bit. I hope the Sheriff doesn’t give me a parking ticket,” he jokes. His mother laughs but shrugs.

“I can’t control my boys when I’m not around them,” she says, but she steps into the café following Arturo, not giving Kyle time to jab back at her. Ever since he’s learned that his mother was in on the alien secret, Kyle has been antsy and nervous around her. He can’t believe it’s been barely a few hours, it feels like a lifetime ago she was telling him that she helped his father with the aliens that Jesse Manes kept captive in Caulfield. His parents had been cruising against the Manes legacy for years – his father had died because of it, and he was terrified that something bad could happen to his mother now that they didn’t know where Jesse Manes was. He’d vanished into thin air three days before, and Alex hasn’t been able to track him down yet, much to his own dismay and increasing anxiety.

“Churro pancakes it is!” Arturo repeats cheerfully, disappearing into the kitchen – leaving the three of them to sit awkwardly at the bar – and resurfacing a few minutes later with a ridiculous apron and a bowl of dough in his hand. “They taste better if prepared with love and family,” he adds when Michelle quirks an eyebrow his way. Liz laughs and stands up.

“I’ll go help him,” she says. “You two stay here. The pancakes should be done before you even know it.”

Kyle watches as she follows her father inside. He fidgets on his seat, unable to meet his mother’s gaze that he can feel burning a brand new hole on his skin. “Are you ever going to look at me, Kyle?” he hears her talking. He blushes. It’s been hard, knowing that he’s been led on for most of his life, and also knowing that all his lies to his mother have been in vain. “I understand you being upset about this all.”

“I don’t think you do,” he snaps back at her. He can feel all the fury and disappointment that have been brewing inside of him ever since he learned about aliens and Project Shepherd and Caulfield finally bursting loose, latching on his tongue. “You think you’ve seen it all? Have you seen a whole generation blowing up in your face because of some crazy man? I’m pretty sure you thought it was okay to lie to me on my face, all these years, all this time you said you were proud of me but apparently not proud _enough_ to get me in on the family secret?” He looks up, finally; his mother is staring back at him as though he’s slapped her. It hurts, deep down, because he’s never been the kind of son to give much grief to his parents, but this lack of trust in him – the lies that hurt the most – emboldens him. “I went to Jesse Manes _of all people_ when I first saw the handprint! If you had been clear to me about all this, instead of all that vague bullshit about going to Manes, I’d have gone to the _right_ Manes in the first place!”

“Kyle,” his mother whispers warningly. He knows he’s already on the verge of shouting, and there’s only too much that can be hid behind the tattle of pans and pots working in the kitchen. “No need to be yelling about this.”

“Not yelling,” he replies, although he lowers his voice. “Anyway, Liz knows about aliens and Project Shepherd. It was her who showed me the first handprint.”

Before his mother can say anything in reply, the clinking of the door tells them that someone’s entering. Faltering footsteps announce the arrival of a stranger to Kyle’s ears; he’s got his back to the door and he can’t see who it is, but the confused look in his mother’s face is enough to make him turn around.

In the middle of the Crashdown, with dust falling off her clothes, Jenna Cameron stares at both of them bewildered, red eyes and tired creases on her forehead. “I saw your car outside,” she says in greeting, not even acknowledging Michelle. “I was looking for you.”

“Cam!” he exclaims, sliding off his chair and rushing to her. He stops short of touching her, he knows she doesn’t like it, but this close up she looks tired – her hair is in a messy ponytail out of which several locks are escaping, her eyes squint against the dim light inside the café, and the shifting of her weight between her left and her right side is telling Kyle that she might drop to the ground anytime in exhaustion. “C’mon, take a seat. Mom, could you please tell Arturo or Liz to bring out something to drink?” he commands his own mother, slipping fast into his doctor mode. He doesn’t like the way Jenna looks right now, sleep deprived and scared. When his mother nods curtly and walks to the kitchen, Kyle has Jenna already scurrying onto one of the booths.

“I’m okay,” she protests faintly.

“Well, you don’t look like it,” he says softly, taking a seat across her on the booth. “I thought you were done with Roswell, almost back to Ohio to meet your sister? What’s happened?” He isn’t ready for Jenna’s eyes watering up, for her hands on top of the table to start trembling. Jenna Cameron has always been the strongest of them all – sometimes even braver than Alex himself – so this change of pace takes Kyle by surprise. “What’s going on, Jenna?”

“I don’t know,” she confesses in a whisper. She’s looking around them as though she’s expecting to be ambushed anytime. “My sister wasn’t in Marysville. She never made it there. I need Max, and I need Alex. We have to find Jesse Manes. He has to know where my sister is.”

“Woah,” Kyle exclaims, lifting his hands in the air. This is too much, even for him who knows what’s been going on in Roswell in the past three days. Jenna didn’t even give him the chance to explain their current predicament when he called her up less than seventy-five hours ago, and now he realizes that she might not be in the best headspace to take the news about Max calmly. “It’s a good thing you’re sitting down.”

“You said you had to tell me something about Max,” she presses on. “Well, spill it so I can go find him and we can hunt Manes back. He’s been behind every single prison change my sister has been involved in, I can tell.”

“Listen, Cam,” he begins, using her nickname because he knows she doesn’t like her given name. Although he often slips and calls her _Jenna_ , and she almost never says anything about it, Kyle thinks right now isn’t the moment to taunt her. “It’s what I was trying to tell you on the phone the other day. Max is–he’s not here.”

“That I can tell,” Jenna frowns at him. “Tell me where he is and I’ll go talk to him. I know he’s not a saint in your book, but I could use his help right now.”

“Max is in no way able to help you right now,” he repeats. “He’s currently sitting in a pod while Liz and Michael work against the clock to bring him back to life.”

“What?” he hears at his back. He turns around to see his mother frozen in a spot in the middle of the space. There’s cling and clatter as Liz almost runs into Michelle with a glass of water and three large milkshakes. “Max is where?”

“Kyle!” Liz admonishes him. _If only she knew_ , he says. 

“I know about them,” his mother confesses, helping Liz get the tray straight. “I didn’t know Max was in one of the pods.”

“You – but,” Liz looks between Kyle and his mother for long moments before biting the bullet. “I don’t think I want to know.”

“You don’t, for sure,” Kyle tells her. “Just so we all are on the same page,” he continues, sick of lies and secrets. “Max killed Noah, brought Rosa back, died in the process, and as of now Jesse Manes is MIA.”

“What?”

“Kyle!”

“What the actual fuck, Valenti?”

The reactions of the three women around him fall on deaf ears as Kyle leans back against the leather of the booth and closes his eyes. There it is, everything in the open for some of the people who are in on the worrying widespread secret of aliens in Roswell. He doesn’t want to face any of them, but when he feels a hand creeping up to squeeze his arm, he gives in. Liz is holding onto him, one hand on his arm and the other holding the tray, eyes weary but determined. Jenna is shaking her head in disbelief, and his mother is frowning.

“We’ll bring him back,” he promises Liz. He gets another squeeze in return for his words. “I don’t know where Jesse Manes is, Cam, but we’re looking for him, Alex and I. And mom, yeah, Rosa _is_ back, and we can’t tell Arturo because he’s seemingly the only one not knowing about them, along with the Evans.”

“I wouldn’t say that about the Evans, though,” Michelle whispers. 

They stare at each other in stunned silence for a second when Arturo’s voice carries out through the air, cheerful and teasing, “Who’s ready for some churro pancakes?”

Kyle only wants to throw up.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

For the second time in a day, Michael is leaving Isobelʼs house without looking back; for the first time, no one is rushing behind him following his footsteps, and that makes him realize how much he needs that tether to the world, a reminder that he means something to someone.

He crosses the patio and exits the space through the back door, circling the building until heʼs walking around the parked cars. A quick glance tells him there isn’t one he could hot-wire in his current state of semi-drunkenness, not without passing out from the effort to focus and use his powers. Sniffling, he leans against one of the vehicles and lowers his head when the world starts spinning out of control. He can feel his brain already swimming against his skull. 

“I need to go back home,” he whispers to himself. “Letʼs go home,” and even though he doesn’t know where _home_ is anymore – the Airstream or the pods or his own world or _a person_ – Michaelʼs fully aware that he needs to move. Soon enough people will be getting out of the house, and if nobody has chosen to follow him to check on his well being, he doesn’t want to offer them the sight of a defeated Michael Guerin, even if all he wants to do is surrender. 

His mind a chaotic hell, Michael begins to walk toward the main street, still not knowing where he wants to go. He isn’t even sure whether or not everything heʼs feeling is his or just some jumbled mix of Isobelʼs grief and pain. Theyʼve been so attuned to one another since Max died that heʼs been having trouble separating his truth from hers. And now theyʼve both felt the pull, the call that lures them to the turquoise mines and the cave and the pods, as though Max is trying to catch their attention. But heʼs dead, Michael reasons. Max chose to walk through that black hole into the unknown. He can’t be pulling tricks on them. 

Only, his hand throbs and his fingers irk in a way they only have before whenever heʼs been next to Max in those vivid dreams inside Isobelʼs mind. Like theyʼre a sign that Max isn’t completely dead, like he could be only partly dead, a quarter dead. 

As though death can work by halves. 

His head hurts so badly he isn’t able to take another step away from the house before he stumbles against the nearest car. He collapses on the cool surface, his knuckles hitting hard on the chassis, scraping his skin and drawing blood. He manages to slide to the floor, hands going up to his hair to thread through the curls, leaving a track of smeared red in between the golden. He couldn’t care less about the mess, not when his head feels like it’s going to explode from the pressure; there’s a pulsing building up inside of him, threatening to consume him as it conquers every corner of his brain, until Michael can’t fight it anymore and falls to his knees on the grainy ground in Isobel’s backyard. He doesn’t even have the strength to scream his lungs out just like he wants to, his throat too parched and his lips too chapped to get any sound past him, so he simply remains there, kneeling and trembling with his hands in his hair, allowing his powers to take over him.

The shock wave, epicentrical in his soul, catches him by surprise. Michael hasn’t lost control of his gift – and it’s taken him _years_ to acknowledge it as a gift – since the incident that earned him an exorcism, so the force of it all is overwhelming. This time, very much unlike when he was fourteen and didn’t know better, he doesn’t have to downplay it as some sort of coincidental lucky strike, that the furniture moved along with an earthquake when he was being beaten for being different. This time, he doesn’t have to keep it all inside in an attempt to not make things worse for him or for Alex while his fingers were being glued together through searing pain and a shattering hammer. This time, he doesn’t have to constrict himself into lifting Max’s car because he’s both mad at him for telling Liz everything and scared that someone might see and take them away.

This time Michael isn’t afraid of being separated from his family, because he’s already lost them all – he’s already lost Max to his own need of being an alien god-like hero, he’s already lost Isobel to the burning fire of the lies Noah fed them all, he’s already lost Alex to the pain of being left behind. He’s lost his mother in a consuming explosion that’s taken away Michael’s forgotten past, his weary present and his most desired future. He has nothing left to lose, and everyone knows, now. Everyone knows what kind of a freak he is, how useless he’s become – a drunken shadow of himself, never good enough to be more like the poster boy Max became. And yet, Maria’s held him; she hasn’t run away. She hasn’t rejected him like every other person he’s come across one way or another: she hasn’t dismissed his pain like Max and Isobel, his self-appointed siblings; she hasn’t given into the fear and the pain of a blown past together like Alex, who’s still fighting his father’s battles instead of his own. She hasn’t woken up the morning after and silently pushed him out of her bed, making sure he knows where his place is in the life chain that works around Roswell – low, low, always lower.

Maria has seen through him and has accepted him, with all his flaws, unconditionally. Michael needs to hold on to that feeling, to the ease with which he’s fitted seamlessly in her life, to the rightness of belonging somewhere even if that place is a bar for locals in the only alien-centered town where actual aliens inhabit. 

There are voices at his back, Maria and Alex murmuring what Michael is sure could be meaningless words because their friendship has been tarnished, and heʼs the only one to blame for that. He remembers, among the pain reigning over his limbs, that in the past three days he has run into Alex a grand total of one time before the funeral, and he knows Maria feels queasy about the whole situation. Michael feels the burden of the blame on his shoulders, mulling over the idea of having destroyed something that was beautiful and pure – a friendship that had grown to become familial and special. He tries to couch further on the ground, away from prying eyes, but he feels weak and small and _needy_ , briefly wondering whether this is how humans feel when they’re sick. The voices quiet, the rustle halts, and he distinctly hears “Michael?” in a whisper, loud enough to reach his ears but hushed so nobody else could hear it. 

Itʼs Alex. Michael wishes he could disappear, that no one would have to see him like this, defeated on the filthy floor of an outside parking lot in the higher part of town, the drunk clown finally beaten. He doesn’t want Alex to come to him. He doesn’t want Alex to have that power over him. 

Loving Alex hurts, so much heʼs been feeling as though he was torn in two whenever Alex left him; loving Alex is a curse, and he doesn’t care right now about his motherʼs words echoing in his mind during their brief encounter before her death. He needs to focus on thinking _the Manes family did this to me and my family and I need to anchor on the hate to move forward_ , because if he recalls the words his mother left him with, _heʼs your family and your future, he gave you life when you couldn’t breathe_ , the whole purpose of leaving the past behind would become a fruitless effort. 

“Go away,” he says through gritted teeth, body aching and head throbbing. “Leave me alone.” 

He hears noise, words being exchanged, the distinct sound of uneven footing walking away on uneven ground, and he sighs, sagging against the car. Maybe now he can breathe, maybe now he can – the world spins violently when he tries to lift his head, bile rising up in his throat, but he has no strength in himself to turn to the side and puke. There’s nothing left in him. 

For as many times as heʼs pushed himself to the limit with too much alcohol, too much acetone, too much _everything_ , this is the worst comeback from a downward spiral heʼs ever gone through. 

He groans from his spot on the ground, too tired and pained to move, when soft hands sneak around his middle and a worried voice asks, “Guer, what’s going on? What is it? Michael!” and then he just lets go. He leans back into the gentleness, into the warmth, and loses his grip on reality and his powers for the first time in over a decade. The wave he’s been trying to hold inside of himself pours through his pores, too powerful to be kept under wraps, and it expands and expands until everything around them lifts and shatters and flies around, only to crash down immediately, when Michael’s finally drained and even his cowboy hat is left tremblingly holding on by a thread of stubbornness from his curls.

Maria doesn’t let go of him, and Michael clings to her, exhausted from the effort of both holding it all in and letting it all out, almost fainting in her arms. The world dissolves around him, bright spots before his eyes, and he finally gives in, welcoming the dazzling darkness with a sigh.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

[rosa leaves the bunker and scares arturo]

On the other side of town, when what looks like an earthquake has destroyed everything in its wake. A trailer’s been tossed around, a hatch has been unceremoniously opened by natural forces, and a black-haired woman has dared to peer into the world outside, a world she hasn’t seen for the past ten years.

Somewhere across town, where Michael’s power shouldn’t have reached, Rosa Ortecho is finally free.

She climbs out of the ladder and into plain sight, taking in the wreckage surrounding her. There are crashed cars piled on each other, windows busted, shreds everywhere. Rosa steps around them with ease – after all, this scrapyard has been like her home for so long, and for her it’s only been some days and not a whole decade – but she’s careful with the glass on the ground. She wouldn’t want to get cut, because an injury of any kind means Valenti on her case, and she doesn’t want the doctor near her anytime soon.

Rosa has had a few days to get adjusted to the new situation, to her baby sister now being older than her, to her friends having changed and turned into adults who kept secrets from each other. She can’t wait to see Maria and gush with her about all the gossip around town for the past ten years, but apparently Rosa can’t go visit her best friend because Maria doesn’t know a thing about aliens. Rosa had been sick and tired of secrets the day she’d decided to flee to Los Alamos for a new life.

She’s already fed up with this whole new level of crap they’re piling on top of her for having come back to life when she hadn’t asked for either being killed or being resurrected. Ever since she’d opened her eyes to see a very much older, very much dead Max Evans, her new life has been a whirlwind of restrictions and orders.

“You have to stick with us,” Liz had said once they had got into Alex’s car. “No one can see you, you’ve been gone for so long. There isn’t any valid explanation for your return.”

“Not yet,” Alex had said, trying to appease Liz’s nerves. “I will find a way. But you will have to be in hiding until I manage to bring you back to life _legally_.”

She has been underneath Guerin’s trailer, in a closed off bunker with so little to do apart from staring into the void and messing up with the alien tech he hasn’t told anyone about. Not even his siblings – and when have the Evans twins become Michael Guerin’s family, she doesn’t know – although from the looks in Alex’s face when it was decided that she’d go with Guerin instead of to the detox bunker under the cabin, maybe he has been aware all along of what Guerin has been doing beneath his trailer. 

It doesn’t surprise her in the least. While she was still alive, the days before Isobel Evans turned all Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on her, Rosa had seen signals in her friend – the way Alex seemed to orbit around Michael Guerin, the way Guerin seemed to follow Alex around with puppy eyes whenever they crossed paths on the streets. She isn’t sure whether or not they finally acted on their very obvious feelings, but the sexual tension could be cut with a knife three days ago in the cave where Rosa had come back to life. It wouldn’t be a shock to her if they had been hooking up; for what she knew about Guerin from ten years before, the rumor mill said he lived in his truck and afforded food by exchanging favors for money. Everyone knew what _that_ meant. 

Rosa begins walking back to town with a renewed spring in her steps. The junkyard is still, ten years later, far enough outside Roswell to require a ride back and forth but she doesn’t have a functioning car handy. As she strolls through the deserted road, Rosa takes in the disaster that the impromptu earthquake created; there are cracks in the asphalt, not deep enough to cause accidents but noticeable, the streets lamplights are slightly beaten and there are a few cars along the way with people wondering whatʼs going on. She doesn’t pay them any attention, not even when a family guy with two kids in the back seat offers her a lift wherever she goes. 

Sheʼs had enough experiences in her life to know when not to take some men up on an offer. 

Rosa walks for what feels like weeks, but it’s only a couple of hours underneath a warm sun, until the sun is finally setting and she recognizes the buildings surrounding her, the streets where she grew up, the corner where she last saw her mom before leaving, and the rooftop above the café from where she used to watch the stars and dream about a new life, a new world. A place to belong to, where nobody would judge her ever again. Her feet have taken her to the back alley behind the Crashdown; she feels her eyes welling up as she looks at the stairs and the familiar door, the grafittis she drew there and that have been taken care of, if the bright colors are anything to go by.

 _Oh, papi_, she thinks. _You haven’t forgotten about me._

This time there’s no car parked in the alley, no painting reminding her of who she was a lifetime ago – four days ago, ten years in the making. Rosa sighs, wringing her hands in front of her as she sits down on the last step watching the stars that have shown up in the sky. Rosa wonders whether the earthquake has affected the booths and the glasses, although everything seems to be unscathed. She remains silent and still for the longest time, until she hears ruckus inside the kitchen and she remembers, maybe a little too late, that the Crashdown must be open if there hasn’t been any damage inside, and that her father must get out by the back door sometime to throw out the trash. She jumps to her feet, searching wildly for a place to hide before anyone who might recognize her opens the door and sees the girl who came back from the dead.

She’s about to turn the corner, find an even darker street to go to, when the door opens noisily, a voice saying, “Be careful, we don’t know if the ground might move again!” and she hears a familiar humming at her back. She stops dead in her tracks – she’ll laugh at her own pun later on – and refuses to turn around when the humming resumes after the door is closed. She would have recognized that sound anywhere, the song her father sang to her whenever she was feeling down.

After all these years, he still remembers it.

“Hey,” her father says softly, as though he’s just seen her silhouette. “Are you okay, kid? Do you need something?”

And it’s so like her father to understand when a stray kid showed up at his door, asking for help without voicing it – it has always been his secret power, and he’s still using it. Rosa can’t turn around, she can’t, she really – she _does_.

For the first time in ten years, she faces the man who raised her, and he’s got more wrinkles around his eyes and more than a few more grays in his hair, but there’s the same softness in his gaze and the same smile dancing in the corner of his lips. For a moment, they stare at each other in silence, but then her father drops the bags he’s holding and he’s reaching out, _mi niña_ , _mi niña_ , _mi niña_ echoing in her ears as he takes in her ripped jeans and the borrowed sweater and the jacket that’s two sizes bigger because it belongs to a really broad Alex.

Rosa freezes and then begins running, leaving behind her father’s calls and his confused words, and she lunges onto the half-lit streets. She jumps off the curb and sprints into the asphalt, and it’s then when she sees the car lights, when she hears the screeching of tires, when she feels the bite of metal against her calf.

The world fades to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter starts with an off-voice, very much the same as the show itself. This chapter is Isobel's voice.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me even as I go back and forth between fandoms, and try my best to keep pace with everything. Life's going to become a bit hectic in the coming weeks, and now definitely this won't be finished by the time S2 airs. I thought I'd care more about that, since it was my goal to have it done before canon throws this to the dustbin, but this is my story and even if it ends up being complete AU, it's what I wanted to write.
> 
> Thanks for being part of this. I will come back soon-ish with more!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're baaaaaaaack! I'm sorry for the delay, but it seems that these days I'm slower than usual. Thanks for sticking with me!
> 
> Now, this chapter is where I draw the line between canon and AU. I know that everything else is now AU under the light of the new season, and that's why it's taken me so long to post this. I didn't know if I wanted to actually keep on writing this, or if I wanted to post what I had written and see what happens. Turns out, I love this story to pieces, it's my baby in this fandom, and I can't imagine not finishing it. So, at a really slow pace, I know I will finish it. I hope some of you are still here for the ride.
> 
> The amazing [brightloveee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightloveee) has been my tether to this universe, even when I wanted to give up. I can't thank you enough for this, honey. I don't own anything, except for my mistakes.

> I’ve spent my whole life being different. I’ve always been the black girl at school, the young girl running a bar in a narrow-minded town, the one to stay in Roswell while my best friends ran away from the pain I couldn’t help them bear. I failed Liz when Rosa died. I failed Alex when I decided not to press on what happened to make him enlist. My mom’s always been right: if facts don’t add up, it’s because truth isn’t included in the equation. I should have listened to the meaning behind the words, but it’s not too late. Now that I know the truth, I can be the woman I should have been ten years ago.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The incessant beeping is grating on his nerves. There’s a steady staccato of shrilling beeps thatʼs driving him crazy, tied to the bed and strapped to those machines that check in on him, probably sending all the gathered data to some computer somewhere else. Jesse would have recognized Project Shepherdʼs gear anywhere, and even the white sheets of the hospital-like bed scream _secret government conspiracy funded by the Manes family_ to him.

After all, it was him who chose the linen and the monogram on everything Project Shepherd related.

He has to be somewhere south, maybe close to the Mexican border. Jesse frowns as he tries to think, the haze in his brain addling his cognizant abilities. He fights to keep his eyes open, but he falls back into the darkness with the name of the place he’s being held on the tip of his tongue.

When he comes to again, it’s to a blinding light and the name _Hawkmill_ falling from his lips. If his memory doesn’t lie to him, Hawkmill isn’t a facility built to keep aliens from hurting humans. No. Hawkmill was built to hold the bioweapon Flint and his team had been working on for six years now.

He has to get out of here. He has to regain control of the situation. He has to rule Flint out of this rebellion he’s started before it’s too late for humanity.

Jesse writhes on the bed, trying to get rid of the handcuffs keeping him tied to the structure. It’s to no avail, he already knows it, but he has to try. He needs to be free of this nonsense and regain the commanding position he had before, when Flint was only his subaltern and not in charge of the whole operation. Jesse doesn’t know what happened to his son — the most loyal out of the four of them — to make him _believe_ he could overrun his own father and disobey such straightforward orders of going after Alex and ending every outburst of alien rebellion.

Jesse keeps trying to free himself for what feels like hours, his wrists bleeding from the constant friction against metal, skin breaking to the point of becoming a raw mess of red and white mixed together in rivulets. His limbs ache under the strain, but he keeps trying to unlock the handcuffs. Itʼs his only chance to get out of this place — he doesn’t know what Flint has in store for him, but his son has been well-trained by the best. Jesse wouldn’t be surprised to learn that torture is in his near future. 

He stops moving when he hears footsteps outside the room. Heʼs been alone for the longest time — another torture mechanism, to isolate the subject and make them break — but thereʼs no way heʼs going to give them what they want. He wonʼt break down, not after all the effort heʼs put into this project. Heʼs not going to allow anyone to steal his life’s work, not even if that someone is his own son. Jesse would have thought, silly of him, that Flint was the one to follow him blindly. After what Jesse had found out about his own son, after what heʼs got on Flint, heʼd thought Flint would cave and become a little obedient soldier. 

That Cameron girl entering his life had been his ruin. 

The footsteps resume after what feels like eons, and Jesse goes back to his attempts to get free, as futile as they are proving to be. He sighs when nothing he does has the desired effect, and tugs at the links to see if they budge. 

Suddenly, everything comes crashing down, the machines crumbling, sparks flying around as wires crash against the floor, his bed collapsing as the Earth shatters, the hinges of the door groaning as they come off. Jesse falls with the bed, one of the machines attached to his body trapping him against the mattress. He twists until he manages to get from underneath the heap of metal and fabrics that roll up around his ankles. When he tugs, both his arms come free, handcuffs hanging from his wrists, as the railing of the bed comes off disentangled from the main structure.

The sirens above his head tell him that there’s an emergency situation going on, as though he wouldn’t have told on his own solely from the extremely rare earthquake that has just taken place. As suddenly as the Earth had begun trembling, the quaver stops altogether – the explosive movement seemingly to fold over itself until it’s all gone, leaving Jesse panting with one hand glued to the nearest wall for support. The door is completely destroyed, and in the corridor he can see military men dressed in Project Shepherd uniforms running around barking orders. There’s chaos everywhere; he realizes that, whatever the origin of the seism is, he has to take advantage of the turmoil if he wants to have a chance at ever escaping Flint’s claws. 

Jesse crouches beside the door frame, using the smashed metal as a shield to peek over and make sure no one’s standing in the middle of the corridor. The handcuffs, still attached to his wrists – one of the loops hanging loosely from each of his hands, clinking and clattering – are too much of a giveaway, but he doesn’t have a way to take them off without chopping off some part of his limbs. Jesse knows Flint keeps the key close to his heart, on a chain dangling from his neck; he has to get to his son before escaping this prison. So he starts walking, covering himself whenever he hears footsteps, but everyone is too engrossed in saving themselves to pay attention to someone running around the halls dressed in a Project Shepherd’s hospital nightgown. Jesse jumps from one corridor to another, searching for both the exit and his son.

He wouldn’t mind finding the former sooner than the latter. He can deal with getting rid of the handcuffs on his own, and he would rather not face Flint under the stress of a facility swept over by fear and yells. Flint has never reacted well under duress – Jesse would know, he trained all his sons and he knows their abilities and their weak spots – so he doesn’t want to have to hurt him, not yet. Flint may be of any use before Jesse decides on the best way to deal with the situation at hand.

The anger that flares up to life when he remembers that Flint bested him, locked him up and drugged him, is unbelievably strong. Thatʼs the second time a son of his has thought he was more clever than Jesse Manes, and he can’t — he wonʼt — allow it. 

Jesse waits before turning a corner, knowing fully well that there are guards waiting on the spot. He needs to keep a low profile, and being dressed as a patient or a prisoner isn’t cutting it; he has to change his attire. He has to get his hands on some new clothes, and he needs shoes. His toes are screaming in pain. 

He breathes for a beat, inhaling and exhaling, his ears open to stimuli until he knows exactly what he has to do. Heʼs been in war zones before — he survived the Gulf War in the early nineties — he knows what to do and how to do it. 

Knocking those guards down and stealing their clothes is easier than expected, but he wasnʼt counting on facing Flint just as heʼs trying to make his way out of the building disguised as one of them. 

“Stop!” Flint exclaims, taking out his gum and aiming it to Jesse. “Stop! Hands in the air!” 

Jesse lifts his hands while he scans his surroundings, looking for a way out. For a second he thinks heʼs done here, but then his salvation comes in the form of blonde hair and tripping feet. He grabs a hold of her and forces her to turn around as he looks for her holster and picks up her gun. 

“You’re a fool, son,” he snarls as he points the gun to her head. “Allowing your girlfriend to wander around armed but distracted.” 

“Let her go,” Flint barks through his teeth. “This is between you and me. Let her _go_.” 

“I donʼt think so,” Jesse replies as he backs away, keeping his hold on Charlie Cameron. 

Flint hesitates, and Jesse seizes that chance to push the girl against Flint and runs away, not waiting to see the reaction. He faintly hears Flint groaning and the girl huffing, but heʼs running away now among the chaos in search of a vehicle. 

When he reaches outside, the military men flooding the space, Jesse spots one Humvee askew against the building, probably pushed there by the earthquake. He moved toward it, jumping inside and searching for the spare key. There isn’t one. He groans in despair; itʼs been a minute since he last busted into a car without having the keys, and his days back in Iraq seem so long gone. 

He fumbles with the dashboard, dismantling it and having a look at the wires. He bites his lips, grabs a couple of the cables, and prays. 

The car roars to life and Jesse whoops in delight. 

He drives off, trying not to call too much attention on himself but that proves to be nearly impossible when Flint shows up at the main entrance as Jesse drives by, signalling at him. Several military men jump on different cars, as Jesse can check on his rearview mirror. He huffs. He needs to speed up, he needs to get out of here. 

He pushes the pedal to the ground, and wishes the woods surrounding the facility can hide him long enough to cover his tracks. 

Jesse can see the other vehicles hunting him, but he keeps driving ahead for at least thirty minutes, through the woods and the haze of the dust floating above the ground. Heʼs too busy keeping track of his hunters that he misses a root pointing out of the path. 

The Humvee collides against the root, and he feels the vehicle rolling around in the air with the force of the speed he was driving, and before the roof crashes on the ground, his world fades to black. 

Jesse opens his eyes to pain on his side and something thick running down his temple. When he lifts his hand to touch it, his fingers come back red. The handcuffs that were hanging from his wrists are now broken on the floor of the upturned car, probably cracked open by the impact. Theyʼre covered in red stains as well. _Great_ , he thinks, breathing in stutters. His limbs feel heavy, but he has to keep moving. Now that he’s crashed the vehicle he’s stolen, he doesn’t have a way to get further from Hawkmill and therefore he can be caught again. He won’t let that happen, not for the third time in a row.

With as much strength as he can muster, Jesse sneaks out of the smashed windshield, earning himself some cuts as the broken glass digs deep into his skin. He doesn’t pay too much attention to the pain — itʼs still way below his pain threshold — before he sets foot on the cold asphalt. He’s lost one of the shoes somewhere between fleeing the building and hijacking the car, and now his toes burn from the fiction against the hard surface. The sirens in the distance warn him that heʼs being hunted by his own men, who have betrayed him in favor of following his son, so he needs to keep going. 

The sign welcoming him into Roswell feels cool against his palm when he stops shortly to catch his breath, fingers holding onto the bars for a second, eyes looking over his shoulder to make sure the other cars were still far away. Jesse isnʼt quite sure how heʼs out-running the military men when heʼs currently escaping by foot, but heʼs not about to question his luck. 

He’s running for his life, and heʼs going to fight until he feels safe — although thatʼs only going to happen when he gets rid of the alien threat on this Earth. 

Jesse keeps running even though he feels like heʼs going to cough up a lung, until he can take in the familiar outlines of the buildings, bricks and walls welcoming him even though heʼs not paying much attention to his surroundings. After what feels like a lifetime, but itʼs probably just under an hour since he ran away from his prison, Jesse reaches the core of town, streets upturned from the force of the earthquake that reached Hawkmill. He takes in the devastation, his lip curling in disgust as his eyes roam over the broken city, the cars pushed to the curbs, the shops windows shattered, the people too scared and shaken to pay attention to the wild-looking man dressed in too big fatigues and shoeless. 

His legs ache from the strain, so he decides itʼs safe for him to stop for a while before trying to reach his house, and the secret basement heʼs been hiding under the structure for moments like this one, although originally he thought he might use it to save his family from an alien invasion instead of to save himself from a human attack. Jesse lets his head rest against a brick wall across the Crashdown, when he spots a girl standing at the entrance of the back alley that can be seen from his place. He has to blink twice to make sure heʼs not having a hallucination. 

Long black hair. The right height. 

When she turns around and begins to run to him, unaware that heʼs watching her, Jesse knows heʼs either losing his mind or right about aliens, because Rosa Ortecho is fleeing from her fatherʼs diner ten years after killing herself and two other girls. 

“Howʼs it even possible?” he mutters, peeling off the wall and starting to rush toward her. He doesn’t heed the car screeching until he feels the bite of the metal against his left leg, the force of the strike sending him flying until he crashes on the ground, rolling on his side. His head hits the hard floor underneath and the last thing he sees is Rosa Ortechoʼs Vans rolling around as the car collides against her too.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Alex doesn’t resume his driving when the earthquake stops. He’s been trying to get as far away from Isobel’s as humanly possible, through the streets of a town where everyone’s been surprised by the ground shaking. Alex knows, deep inside, that Michael’s the one who caused the trembling – that he’s so gone on his own grief about what happened to Noah, about Max’s death, and about everyone seemingly knowing about his alienness way before he can tell anyone _himself_. Alex wants to help him, but Michael made his choice three days ago, and there’s nothing Alex can do about it.

This isnʼt about just him — this is about respecting boundaries and choices, this about being supportive of each other. This is about being _friends_ , even if he had been painfully aware of his poor choice of words back at the time. As though he could ever be just friends with Michael Guerin. How can anyone be _only_ friends with the person who hangs the sun and the moon and the stars and the whole fucking sky? 

Alex punches the wheel angrily before leaning into it and resting his forehead against the leather. He needs to collect himself. He needs to be a man — a real Manes man — and keep his distance. Michael has chosen Maria, and itʼs the best he could do. It’s obvious that Maria is a soothing presence in Michael’s life, from what Alex has been able to witness. 

He takes a deep breath before fumbling for the ignition and turning the key. The car doesn’t start. Alex tries again, and again, his fingers sweaty against the cool metal, slippery and shivering. The engine groans but doesn’t even seem to work. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he exclaims. He climbs down the cab and closes the door with more force than needed, before sauntering to the front of the Humvee. 

Alex opens the hood and frowns at the engine below, a mismatching heap of metal and tubes that make no sense to him. Not for the first time in the last ten years — not for the last in his whole life, heʼs afraid — he wishes Michael was around to fix this mess. Alex doesn’t have the slightest idea whatʼs wrong with his car; Michael would, but Alex is in no way going back to him right now. He twists some tubes and checks some levels, tweaking a few screws and hoping heʼs not making a worse mess than he originally had. 

By the time Alex is done with the engine, heʼs sweating and his fingers are smeared black with engine oil, but the car starts when he hops inside the cab and turns on the ignition. The roaring noise soothe something in his soul, Alex feels invincible simply because he hasnʼt needed anyone to fix this problem. “Suck it, dad,” he spits mainly to himself, to jinx out the ghosts that inhabit his mind. For all the success heʼs had in his life with codebreaking and espionage, Alex is still afraid of how little of the most manly things heʼs actually able to do — he knows the basics of mechanics, enough to keep a truck running in the desert under a rain of bullet, and he knows the basics of construction, enough to keep a building from collapsing long enough to break into it. 

He’s at a loss with normal things, although there’s nothing normal in a car halted by an earthquake caused by an alien. 

When he checks the clock inside the console, he blinks. He raises his wrist to check on his watch as well, realizing heʼs spent almost two full hours fixing the engine. Alex sighs as he swerves back into the main road from the curb where the earthquake had sent him. He hasn’t even noticed the dimming light. 

“Time for take out dinner,” he tells himself as he drives through town. He’s set for the Crashdown, mouth already watering at the mere thought of one of Arturoʼs specials and a big milkshake with a side of fries. Fixing engines stirs up an appetite, it seems. 

It takes him less than ten minutes to reach downtown, and a little more than that to find a parking spot. He drives past Kyleʼs SUV parked in front of the entrance; Alex shakes his head. Being the son of the Sheriff has its perks, it seems — not getting a ticket is one of them. Behind him, a car that seems familiar is parked askew; he thinks there might be a small gathering inside the Crashdown, and he doesn’t know how to feel about stepping into a family reunion, even if heʼs aware that it wonʼt be a full family gathering. 

Not when Arturo doesn’t know about Rosa being back. 

Alex finds a free spot on a sideway and he simply remains inside for a few seconds, hands gripping the steering wheel, until he feels strong enough to face whoever is inside the café. It’s been a trip of an afternoon, heʼs still reeling from the earthquake, but he hasnʼt forgotten about the fact that the Evans have, seemingly, known about the true nature of their children all along. Heʼs still trying to decide if that makes them victims or monsters, and how it translates into them leaving Michael behind — did they know when they went to adopt, did they find out later on, did they ever worry about Michael’s fate at all — when he hears tires screeching and voices crying out. 

Alex slips into motion, opening the door and jumping outside, his hand already on his regulation weapon as he rounds the corner ready to fight. He isn’t expecting what he sees when he finally reaches the main street. 

The first thing he sees is a car stopped across the asphalt, driverʼs door wide open and a young man with blue streaks in his hair frozen in his spot, hands raking through his short locks. Then, Alex registers one of the two people on the ground, face down and arms sprawled like an angel with broken wings; there’s no blood in sight, which means there could be internal damage. His frown deepens when he approaches the scene, gun forgotten for now as he assesses the situation. He would recognize that black hair anywhere. 

Rosa. 

His eyes search the surroundings, and his heart plummets when he sees Arturo standing on the curb, garbage bags dangling from his hands. He files it away for later — there will be too much to explain later on, but not now — and focuses on the second person on the floor, a man on his back wearing sweatpants and an oversized Air Force hoodie. His eyes are closed, a drop of blood trickling down his temple and marring the already filthy ground. 

Jesse Manes has finally got out of his hiding hole, only to be run over by a car in front of the Crashdown. 

“Alex!” he hears as the world narrows to the asphalt, as he experiences the worst of tunnel vision where all he can do is stare agape for the longest time until he is shaken back to this reality by Arturoʼs shrieks. “Alex!” 

When he looks up, he sees Liz and Kyle and Sheriff Valenti and Jenna Cameron standing in the doorway, faces scrunched up and anguished, before Kyle sets into motion, firing orders out like the doctor heʼs become. “Liz, take your father inside, now!” he commands as he moves forward. “Mom, Cam, help us. Alex! Go to the girl! I will take care of _him_.” Kyle sets his jaw and runs to the road, flinging a set of keys to his mother, who catches them in the air. He stares a glance with Alex, his eyes screaming _how on Earth is he here_ and _thank God weʼve found him_ and _Iʼm making sure he doesn’t get out of our sight ever again_ , but instead if speaking he turns back to his mother. “Get my bag from the trunk,” he tells her. “I will need it.” 

Alex nods and begins moving, approaching the blue-haired driver and Rosa. With difficulty, because his prosthetic leg is giving him pain today, he kneels beside her and checks her vitals. Alex lets out a relieved sigh when Rosa bats his hand away and tries to sit up. “Woah, slow, slow,” he tells her, motioning for her to lie down again. “We donʼt know if you have a concussion.” 

“Iʼm fine, Alexander,” she rasps, effectively sitting up and looking at the blue-haired man still standing shocked by his car. “What were you thinking? You couldʼve killed me!” 

Alex steals a glance at Kyle and his mother' the doctor is trying to set everything to stabilize Jesse — itʼs been a minute since Alex has thought of him as _dad_ — while Michelle is on the phone, presumably calling for an ambulance. Cam is standing next to Kyle, making sure he has everything he needs to take care of Jesse handy.

After a few tense seconds, Jesse coughs and groans, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Kyle looks up at Alex from his spot on the ground and says, “Heʼll live.” Alex understands the rest of the unsaid words, the promise that Jesse wonʼt wake up and that everything will be under control once the ambulance gets here. 

“What happened?” he demands, but his voice is drowned by the noise of emergency vehicles finding their way to them. 

He has to get Rosa out of here before someone else comes around and recognizes her. 

“I couldʼve killed _you_?” the blue-haired man finally reacts, taking a step toward them, a wild look in his eyes. “First that crazy man jumps in front of my car and then you show up out of nowhere, and itʼs _my_ fault?” 

The sirens are approaching. Alex debates internally whether or not to involve this stranger in this situation, but he decides that although Blue Hair has flung himself in the middle of their war, thereʼs no need to add him in on the secret. Not when Jesse Manes is part of the problem. 

“I don’t care whose fault is it,” he says with his best Air Force Captain voice. “We need to get you out of here,” he tells Rosa. 

“I can walk.” 

“I can give you a ride to the hospital,” Blue Hair offers. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Alex tells him, helping Rosa to her feet. “I understand you have to remain here until the ambulance comes, but we need to go now.”

“But—” Blue Hair tries to protest, but suddenly Sheriff Valenti interrupts him. 

“Leave, Alex,” she says, shoving her shorter frame between them. “Take her with you.” She fishes for her police badge and flashes it to Blue Hair. “I’m Sheriff Valenti. Please stay put. We’ll take care of this. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But—” he tries again, only to be impatiently cut off by her tapping her feet on the floor.

“I’m here to make sure everything’s taken care of properly,” she explains. “I’m a witness myself, Mr—”

“Yahzee,” Blue Hair introduces himself. “Forest Yahzee.”

“Navajo?” Alex blurts before he can stop himself. He knows all about the origin of the name, what with having been brought up in a house where his Native American mother loved to play _Windtalkers_ on repeat — Ben Yahzee was one of the main characters, a Navajo man who could always save the day. He was Alex’s hero growing up.

“Weren’t you just _leaving_?” Sheriff Valenti hisses. Alex turns around, allowing Rosa to lean into him, and he seizes this opportunity to watch over where Kyle is checking Jesse’s vitals and keeping him lying on the ground. 

“Mr Yahzee,” he hears Sheriff Valenti speak at his back. “I would like to ask you some questions before the emergency services arrive.”

Alex takes this as his cue to walk away, helping Rosa until they are out of sight. Only when he’s sure no one’s watching them does he allow himself to let go of Rosa and slump against the nearest wall, fingers massaging his leg where the stump meets the prosthesis.

It’s exactly that moment that Rosa chooses to stand up and flee, straight into the Crashdown. Alex calls after her, trying to run hot in her trail, until she disappears into the building.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It takes him a while to orient himself once he gets out of the cave. It’s not much colder than heʼd expected, so maybe he hasnʼt been out for long, but he canʼt be sure. He begins to walk the second he gets out of the secluded space, but he doesn’t go to his house immediately. First, he wants to take in his surroundings, understand what has happened and, more importantly, know how heʼs going to explain everything to Isobel and Michael.

When he turns around and begins walking toward his house, the Earth shatters. He doesn’t have anywhere to get a grip, so he tries to lock his knees and fall to the ground to keep himself safe, but the second his hands touch the soil, the ground stops moving around him. He frowns at his own fingers where theyʼre digging into the ground, willing them for an explanation. He doesn’t get one, at least not the way he was expecting; he spreads his fingers further away from his body to check how the Earth calms down under his touch. 

“Alien,” a nagging voice tells him from the back of his head. “You can bend reality to your own will.” 

The voice sounds to eerily similar to Kedraʼs, but he doesn’t want to believe it. All he ever wanted was to be normal, to feign commonness. 

All he ever wanted was to be human, and instead heʼs been given the knowledge Michael’s been looking for their whole lives. 

Max forces his fingers press down on the soil, willing his blood to stop the quake. In the first few shocking seconds, nothing happens, but after a moment he begins to feel the Earth stilling, the cants and the dust setting down around him. Max blinks several times after the earthquake dissolves in a fit of trembling shudders. “What the actual fuck,” he mutters to himself. He may not know how long heʼs been inside a pod, he may not remember exactly what happened — his memory hazily brings up Rosa Ortechoʼs terrified stare looking down at him, but thereʼs nothing else coming up — but heʼs sure of just one thing in his life. 

The source of the shattering is alien, of course, and unless Isobel and Michael have realized on their own that they can exchange powers, there’s only one of them able to break the Earth and turn it upside down. 

“Michael,” he breathes, bringing one hand up to his temple, his fingertips grazing the flesh there. Max canʼt feel his brother there, not even the slight, faint presence he used to prod at when the three of them were finally reunited. Through the years, through all the fallouts theyʼve been through, Max has been slowly losing small parts of that connection — or maybe Michael has become better at putting up a wall. Either way, Max canʼt find him through their link, so he tries again, this time with Isobel. 

“Iz,” he calls, standing up and walking towards his house. He can see the damage the quake has caused in the desert, creases and gaps in the dunes. He can only imagine what Roswell is looking like right now. “Iz, it’s me,” he tries again. 

“Max?” comes the shaky reply, Isobelʼs voice watery in his mind. “Is it really you?” 

“Yes,” he says, eyes already on his home, the lonely building in the outskirts of town, just like heʼs always wanted. 

Whenever Isobel or their mother asked why he insisted on purchasing a condo so far away from civilization, Max always replied the same. _I just want to be able to see the desert whenever I want_ , heʼd tell his mother. _I donʼt want to cause a scene if I lose control_ , heʼd tell a skeptical Isobel. Max remembers clearly how only Michael had ever read through the lines of his white lies, calling him out on the spot. 

Heʼd wanted to remain close to the place they came from, so he could check on the pods and make sure everything remained the same. He always wanted to stay linked to their origins, and if that doesn’t turn him into a hypocrite then he doesn’t know anything anymore. Heʼs always despised Michael for not wanting to blend with humanity, and heʼs been doing the same all along. 

“Yes,” he repeats. “Are you safe? I feel distress.” 

“How is this possible?” Isobel marvels in his headspace. “Max, how are you alive?” 

“I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “But I have a lot to tell you.” 

“Me too,” she tells him. Heʼs still feeling anguish and something he canʼt put a finger on. “Where are you? Are you okay?” 

“I am,” Max says as he enters his home, the door always open because no one would ever dare to break into a Deputyʼs house in the outskirts of a quiet town. Everything is exactly how he left it, and still he feels like the outsider. “Can you come? Iʼm home.” 

There’s hesitation in Isobelʼs end; Max frowns when he feels her pulling slightly away, until he realizes she’s communicating with Michael. “Isobel?” he calls again. He doesn’t want to lose this connection — itʼs the first thing that feels _real_ ever since he chose to save Rosa. 

“We canʼt,” his sister finally replies. “There’s so much you donʼt know yet, Max. We canʼt move now. Michael isnʼt stable.” 

Max remembers the earthquake heʼd been able to stop, and sighs. “The shaking.” 

“Among other things,” Isobel sighs again. “Weʼre home. If you can call home the house I shared with _him_.” 

Max grabs a jacket from his closet and puts it on while he walks back out. On his way he picks his keys from the small table at the entrance. He doesn’t expect his car to be parked outside — after all, he used it to go to the caves and he never came back — but there it is, proud and waiting for him. He smiles; Michael must have brought it back. “The concept of home might have changed these days,” he tells her. 

Isobel sends him a psychic smile. “Tell me about it.”

“I can’t go to Noah’s, even if it’s yours now. Somewhere in the middle?” He can feel her frowning, so he rushes to impose his opinion. “Somewhere neutral might work better. The Pony? I just want what’s best for everyone.” 

She sighs. “It makes sense, now that Maria knows.” Max wants to ask for an explanation, why Maria DeLuca knows about their secret, but he doesn’t need to. Isobel keeps on, “I don’t know how or when, he wouldn’t tell me, but he’s now dating Maria. Everything’s changed, Max. I’ll see what I can do. Donʼt take long.” 

“I won’t,” he promises as he hops into his car and ignites it. He still has someone else to contact. 

Max just hopes Liz answers.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“It was her!” her father repeats, over and over again. Liz looks everywhere but at his face, bewildered and confused as he tries to understand what he has just seen. She doesn’t want to acknowledge that their world might be crumbling down, not when she doesn’t have the support Max gave to her. The same support she’s trying to find for Michael and Isobel, now that they’re working together to bring Max back. Through her layers of clothes, she discreetly touches the spot where Max’s mark flashes on her skin; even if she’s not actually feeling it under her fingertips, the connection she has with him from before everything went awry is still strong.

Liz sighs as her father keeps ranting about how he thinks he saw Rosa outside, getting run over by a car driven by a blue-haired stranger. She thinks about how her life has become this nightmare where her alien boyfriend — although she isn’t sure they were _anything_ before Max gave his life up for Rosa’s — is gone and her dead sister is now alive and breathing outside the café their family has owned for decades now.

“¿Me estás oyendo, mija?” her father addresses her straight away, taking her apart from her reverie. “I’m telling you, it was Rosa out there. I need to go outside!” When he motions for the door, Liz gets between him and the exit with a stern look in her face.

“You’re not going anywhere, papi,” she tells him, hands on her hips, fingers ghosting over the handprint glowing on her skin. “I know it’s been hard to look, that accident, but Kyle specifically said that you should remain here.”

“I _have_ to go out there!” he insists. “¿No lo entiendes? ¡Era tu hermana!”

Liz doesn’t want to lie to him, not anymore, but it’s not only her secret to tell. She isn’t sure about how her father is going to take the news that there are aliens walking among them that can resurrect the dead. “Of course I understand, dad,” she continues, voice softer as she steps toward him. “I understand the need to _believe_ , but how could it be possible, dad? It was dark, you couldn’t see properly.”

“I’m prediabetic, not blind!” he finally yells, losing his calm and flopping down on one of the booths. “I know what I saw, and that was your sister, Elizabeth. She was Rosa.”

“Okay, let’s play along,” Liz finally settles to say, walking over at where her father is and taking a seat across the table. “You know Rosa died ten years ago in a car crash,” and the lie burns in her tongue, because she knows the truth now — she knows of handprints and aliens and stowaways and powers strong enough to break invisible walls. “She killed Jasmine and Kate. But you keep saying she was outside, before. What could have possibly happened that we all believed she was dead when she wasn’t?”

To his credit, her father appears to be confused as he frowns, evidently thinking about what could have happened. “Maybe it was all a trap,” he finally says. “Maybe she got herself into some serious trouble, more serious than the drug thing. Maybe she just got kidnapped because of it?” His eyes light up with a sadness that Liz hasn’t seen in them for a long time — ever since those first weeks after Rosa’s first death.

“Kidnapped? Did you knock yourself over out there, dad?”

“Maybe she got into some human trafficking whatever,” he explains. It’s obvious that what he thinks really happened to Rosa, what his mind is trying to supply to understand what he has just seen, is hurting him as much as losing his daughter did. Liz wonders if he ever knew that Rosa wasn’t his — she wonders if he would have treated Rosa differently, had he known.

“Dad, you’re not making any sense,” she tells him, but before she can add anything, a pang on her side makes her double over the table. 

“Liz?” her father asks, concerned. She manages to lift her head up enough to look him in the eye and smile.

“I’m okay, I’m fine,” she says, trying to speak through the pain she’s now feeling, searing through her insides starting from the same spot where she asked Max to mark her, so she could feel what he felt and he could reciprocate. “It’s just, I think I hurt my side when we rushed outside, that’s all.”

“¿Estás segura?” 

She nods, unable to talk now that the pain has turned into something stronger, deeper, that’s eating her up from the inside. It has nothing to do with the electricity she felt a few hours ago, right before the earthquake shook through Roswell.

Liz has the feeling that the earthquake has been all Michael’s doing; despite Isobel’s efforts to practice new skill sets, Liz knows it’s been too short of a time to actually see such developments. She wonders if it has something to do with Max — given that she knows Michael has to have a handprint, because Max healed his hand. She’s spent the past three days wondering whether that was the reason why Michael’s been hiding the unblemished skin behind a horrid bandana. She wonders if Max’s state has changed in any capacity, but she dismisses the thought almost immediately. Whatever it is, it can’t be Max waking up — Liz has never pegged herself for a romantic girl, but with everything that has happened, everything that they have gone through, she’s found herself believing in happy endings and fairy tales.

If Max were awake, she’d know. Liz is sure of that.

However, the jolt she’s felt through the bond she now shares with an almost dead alien hasn’t been enough to keep her from functioning the first time around. Unlike this time, when she’s got to stop talking, too hurt by the pain to even think straight. Even with her newfound faith in fairy tales and everlasting love, Liz is still a scientist. She needs data, she needs evidence, she needs information to work with.

She needs answers about what’s going on, why the handprint has gone wild under her blouse, why she feels like a fire is spreading through her. The voices in her head begin speaking before she can understand what’s happening.

 _Liz, can you hear me?_ in the distinct voice of Max that she’s become so intimately aware of. She shakes her head. _Liz!_

“Mija, are you okay?” comes her father’s voice, worried and with a tinge of impatience that she knows from her younger days — that’s the tone he used on her whenever she lost focus and he had to call her name several times. “Liz, are you fainting?”

“No, no, dad, I’m okay, believe me,” she manages to say, clutching her side tighter. _Liz_ , and this time Max is more insistent in his calling. _Liz, where are you? If you can hear me, please go to Isobel’s. There’s so much I need to tell you_.

Liz closes her eyes briefly, trying to find an excuse that sounds feasible to her father’s ears, but she’s distracted by the doorbell ringing as someone enters the Crashdown. “We’re closed!” both she and her father say. Liz opens her eyes and tries to get up, but when she sees the person who’s just entered she plummets down on her seat once again.

“Rosa?” her father asks, tentatively, as he watches his older daughter standing proud in front of them, backlit and bathing in the glow of the Crashdown neon lights outside. Behind her, the door swings open to reveal Alex rushing in. He collides against her and they both come tumbling forward, not getting to fall onto the floor. Liz groans.

“What’s going on here?” her father asks. 

Alex catches Rosa before she falls onto her knees and begins to pull her out of the café, but Liz can hear her father’s voice over Max’s cries in her head, serious and demanding, “Alexander Manes, what is going on here? Who is this girl and why does she look exactly like my Rosa?”

Liz can hear his accent slipping, covering the way he drawls out the words and painting his speech with a heaviness she hasn’t heard in years. 

“Papi,” Rosa says then, getting rid of Alex’s grip. Liz manages to stand up, ignoring the jolt of pain on her side and tuning out Max’s voice, unable to reply to him or to even understand why he’s in her head if he’s mostly dead. “Papi, soy yo. It’s _me_.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“This is mostly inconvenient,” Kyle mutters under his breath, his hands on Jesseʼs pulse on his neck. “What the actual heck?”

“You never were so tight-lipped,” Jenna points out from his spot above him, standing tall in the middle of the street, watching around as the town regains conscience once again and a few people begin to approach them. 

“Iʼm trying to work here,” Kyle retorts, almost angrily. He doesn’t want to snap at her but heʼs trying his best to keep Jesse alive but still unconscious — Kyle doesn’t know where he has been, what heʼs been up to, but no one in their corner can afford Jesse Manes awake and conscious. “Whereʼs my mother?” 

Itʼs difficult for him to dissociate his mother from the sheriff taking notes and listening politely to a blue-haired man Kyle imagines is the driver. He hasnʼt really paid attention to his surroundings, everything becoming a blur once he laid eyes on the accident in front of him. Kyle looks around to make sure Alex has taken Rosa away, and by the time the emergency services arrive heʼs managed to achieve his goal. 

“Is he alive?” Jenna asks him a second before the ambulance stops in front of them. 

“Yeah,” he assures her, one hand still on Jesseʼs pulse, the other hiding the needle heʼs carried with him this whole time, just in case he’s ever confronted the threat once again. 

“Good,” Jenna replies, voice hard. Kyle knows that, if he so much as glances up her way, he would see anger radiating from her. They havenʼt had time to explore her reasons against Jesse Manes further than the obvious he already knew before she left — they had been distracted by the ruckus. 

Kyle sighs. They had been trying to understand what each of them knew about their current predicament — first while Arturo had been in the kitchen making his famous churro pancakes and later when he had been out with the garbage — but they hadnʼt got very far before the Earth had begun shaking. Kyle doesn’t think he will ever forget Lizʼs face when she realized his mother knew about everything from the original crash to the aliensʼ identities' Jenna had just huffed _fantastic_ under her breath every now and then. 

Kyle has the feeling that there’s still so much they need to find out about what happened and how it happened, about who is in on the secret and who is a threat, but they don’t seem to have enough time, not when Jesse has been on the loose. 

“Dr Valenti,” he hears and he snaps back to reality to stare at one of the doctors heʼs been working with during his ER shifts. Kyle tries to remember her name, but his focus is set on Jesse on the floor and he frowns.“Dr Valenti, can you please tell us whatʼs happened?” 

There are at least two other people kneeling next to him, checking on Jesseʼs vitals. 

“Master Sergeant Jesse Manes,” he finally articulates, keeping his hands in his pockets. “During the quake, he got run over and lost consciousness,” he explains. “I kept him stable, and Sheriff Valenti and Deputy Cameron here are handling the situation.” 

“White male, late forties, presents a blow to the head. Possible concussion,” she says quickly. “Dr Valenti has stabilized the patient. Weʼre taking him to the hospital. Do you know of any relatives we should call?” She asks him as Jesse is lifted on a stretcher and placed inside the ambulance. 

“He has four sons,” Kyle explains. “I will contact one of them and will send him your way.” He knows he wonʼt be allowed to ride in the ambulance with them, because heʼs not family and those are the rules, but hopefully the dose of barbiturates heʼs injected in Jesseʼs veins once again will keep him asleep long enough until Alex can make it to the hospital. Kyle fishes for his cell in his back pocket as his colleagues close the ambulance doors — he still hasnʼt remembered her name. The vehicle rushes away, and he can finally press the right buttons on his touch screen. As always, his call goes straight to voicemail, and he leaves a short “Go to Roswell Community Hospital” before hanging up. 

When he turns to his mother and Jenna, he sees they are still next to the blue-haired man. He saunters over there as casually as possible, his heart thumping in his chest as he evaluates the chances he has of being discovered. He decides heʼs safe so long as Alex makes it to the hospital in time to force his hand on a transfer to a military hospital where he can have his father controlled. 

“Thatʼs all,” he hears his mother saying as he approaches the three of them. Jenna has a distinct frown in her face — a sign that she’s uncomfortable with whatever is being said. “I will contact you in case anything else is needed, Mr Yahzee.” 

“Thanks,” the man says with a small voice. “Are you sure they wonʼt press charges? That man didn’t seem to be in good shape. Iʼm new in town and I donʼt want any trouble.” 

“I know both of them,” his mother reassures the driver. “Jesse will be perfect in no time, my son has made sure of it.”

“And the girl?” 

“I have sent Jesse to the hospital,” Kyle interrupts them before his mother has to invent some lie. “Just for some check up to make sure heʼs okay. Iʼm afraid his medication made him jump in front of the car. Once he wakes up, heʼll be really ashamed of what happened.” The lies burn on his tongue — heʼs sure Jesse Manes has _never_ been ashamed of anything heʼs ever done — but he’d rather be the one telling them. “Why donʼt you get inside and let me check on you?” he offers the driver. “This has been stressful for you as well.” 

He sees the man pondering his offer before looking at his mother. She nods encouragingly and the man sighs. “I guess I could use it,” he finally relents. “But I would like to check on that man,” he insists. “Itʼs the least I can do.” 

“I’ll make sure of it,” Kyle tells him, signalling to the Crashdown entrance. “After you.” 

Kyle follows the man, who reluctantly leaves his car behind, still a bit askew on the street but no longer in the middle of the road, when a rush of black hair and a denim jacket blurs a way into the door and opens it. Halfway between the café and the nearest corner, Kyle can see Alex, defeated and panting, doubled over himself as though heʼs catching his breath. 

“Rosa, no! Stop!” Alex manages to cry out, loud enough to reach them all but not strong enough to stop her. 

Kyle watches impotent as Rosa Ortecho rushes into the café her father owns for the first time in over ten years, and he wonders when his life has definitely gone astray.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Arturo Ortecho has seen inconmensurable things in his life. He watched as his family got torn apart by poverty and murder in Ciudad Juárez. He saw his mother die in his arms because of a cold that never got properly treated due to lack of resources. Heʼs been on the receiving end of torture the one time he chose to follow in his brotherʼs footsteps and tried to enter the local gang. He waded a river to get to his dreams, and he almost died from diseases that only show up after weeks traveling with nothing but hopes in his backpack. He had a wife and he lost her to drugs and alcohol and mental illnesses nobody ever talks about.

He had two daughters — beautiful, talented young girls who always made him proud no matter what — until he was robbed of one of them. Again, drugs and alcohol, a bad mix with youth and relentlessness, and heʼs been mourning a loss that has been his to suffer as well for a decade. He blamed himself for not having been more attentive to Rosa, for not having seen the signs, for having lost himself in the pain of seeing her self-destroying without lending a hand. 

He lost his oldest daughter, and heʼs always thought he’d spend the rest of his life crying over churro pancakes and flowers drawn on walls. 

But now Rosa is standing in front of him, blinking like she did the day before he lost her, not looking a second older than her nineteen year old self. She’s smiling shyly at him, a smile he can only remember from older times — easier times, he tells himself — when everything could be fixed with a healthy session of chocolate milkshakes and a round or two of Counting Crows on the jukebox. 

“Itʼs me,” the ghost of his dreams is saying, and he nods. He doesn’t understand how or why, but he isn’t one to let fear get in the way of whatʼs being offered to him. “Papi, are you okay?” 

Arturo smiles softly, taking a step toward his oldest daughter, the baby he got to hold in his arms and choose a name for. She’s back, she entered the Crashdown the same way she did those spring days when the weather showed no mercy and she couldn’t be out and about painting the town with her brightest colors — Rosa just takes up all the space and lights everywhere with her mere presence. 

“Rosa,” he manages to choke out, a hand stretched out to her, the other rising up to his chest to make sure his heart is still beating. “Mi niña bonita.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Liz standing up, tense and clutching her jacket around her waist as though she’s feeling some kind of pain on her side. Arturo makes a mental note to check on her later, but right now there are more pressing issues in front of him. 

“How’s this even possible?” he marvels. 

Alex clears his throat, effectively centering everyoneʼs attention on him. “Itʼs a long story, Mr Ortecho, believe—” 

“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Arturo?” he admonishes Alex, who looks down briefly, a shade of pink tinging his cheeks. “I donʼt want any more lies, son. I want the truth.” 

Arturo witnesses as Alex finally look up, searching for Liz. He watches as they maintain a silent conversation, Alex’s always expressive eyebrows shooting up, Liz shaking not so subtly her head. Arturo canʼt really focus on them for long; his eyes land once again on Rosa, whoʼs staring right ahead, assessing the situation in the same way she used to, ten years before this moment. She doesn’t look a minute older than nineteen, but she has had to get older in these over one hundred months. Arturo realizes she’s wearing a jacket that belongs to Liz; no matter the clothes, Rosa still stands on her feet like she owns wherever she is, like she’s a queen waiting for her subjects to get on their knees in front of her. She’s so much like Helena, and yet Arturo knows neither of her daughters could ever reach his wifeʼs level of craziness. 

“You wouldn’t believe us, dad,” Liz begins, only to be caught off by a glare coming her way from Rosa. Arturo holds back a fit of laughter. 

Even so many years later, they are back to their usual banter. 

“Try me,” he says. His fingers are itching to touch, to make sure Rosa feels the same she did when he last hugged her before she got mad at him for one reason or the other and stormed out of the café for that last time. “What was it? Human trafficking? Has Alex helped rescue you?” There’s only a handful of reasons why a decorated airman could be involved in something as secretive as bringing her allegedly dead daughter back. It doesn’t cross his mind that Alex has been a friend of both his girls for longer than either of them can remember. 

“Arturo—” 

“I was dead,” Rosa blurts out, speaking over Alex’s feeble attempt to explain. “Dad, I was really dead. Muerta. There was a, uhm, murder, but—” 

“A murder?” Arturo thinks heʼs lost all ability to understand English. “Everyone said there was an accident, that you were drugged, but I knew, yo lo sabía—” 

Rosa holds up a hand, and Arturo shuts his mouth. A little behind him, Liz flops down once again on the booth with a groan. In his direct line of sight, Alex flinches and moves forward only to still mid-movement as though he isn’t sure his help would be welcome. Rosa sighs. 

“I was clean back then,” she says. “Not completely clean, but I was trying to. Jim had helped—” 

“Jim Valenti?” Arturo feels his jaw slacking a bit. God help him, if Jim Valenti had reached his daughter, if the secret had been let out — Arturo feels his knees shaking. Yet, he puts up what he thinks is a stern look, and sighs. “Why would you let Jim Valenti help you? Why didn’t you come to me?” 

“It doesn’t matter now,” Liz speaks for the first time. “Rosa, you shouldn’t be here.” 

Rosa massages her temple as if her head is hurting her, and sighs. “I am where I should be, hermanita. But youʼre right, it doesn’t matter. Dad,” she continues, “I got murdered. Thatʼs what happened. Some psycho was obsessed with me, he followed me and he—” she gulps down a breath. Arturo can tell itʼs difficult for her, but he needs answers and he finds himself putting his own desire to know above whatever she’s trying to tell him. “He used someone to actually kill me. He was a monster, and he was a coward.” 

“Why are you using past tense?” Arturo demands. Heʼs trying to appear composed, though his anger is boiling deep in his gut. He wants to put his hands on that monster who thought it was correct to track down his daughter and hurt her. 

“Heʼs dead now,” Alex says, dispassionate and even. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” 

“Did I know him?” 

“Weʼre telling you I was killed and now I am alive again, and all you want to know is who did it?” Rosa sounds astonished. This time Arturo doesn’t hold back and he almost doubles in laughter. 

“I believe in the resurrection of the flesh, cariño,” he explains. “I want to make sure _he_ doesn’t come back.” 

“Oh, he wonʼt,” Liz assures him. Arturo turns around to see her paler than before but with a determined look in her eyes. “Max made sure of it.” 

“Max? Max Evans?” 

“Liz!” Alex tries to intervene. “It isn’t yours—” 

“He has a right to know,” Liz tells him. “This affects him as well.” 

“Just like it affected Maria?” Arturo can tell there’s something else going on between the two of them, but he canʼt put a finger on what it is. “I donʼt know why Iʼm so surprised. You get to decide when and where people get to know this. You get to decide how people find out. You get to cheer for some people over others, instead of staying neutral, because you think you know all sides to a story.” 

“Enough,” Rosa says; Arturo sees a glimpse of her old self, the girl who could calm everyone down with just a word. “Keep whatever this is out of this. I’m trying to explain to my father that I was brought back by an alien!”

Arturo blinks once, twice, breathing through his nose as Rosa’s outburst settles into Alex’s and Liz’s brains. The first to react is Alex, shaking his head and slumping back until his back collides against the glass door. Then Liz stands up, seemingly forgetting about her sudden pain, and walks past him to stand in front of her sister. “Rosa,” she whispers.

“What?” Rosa retaliates, eyeing Arturo with a weary look. “It’s the truth. There are aliens among us, they have powers and can bring people back from the dead. _You_ know that, Liz. Alex knows that, now. Everyone knows, except dad. He’s got a right to know! He’s got a right to know all the truths, beginning with aliens and ending with Jim being my—”

“Rosa!” Liz says warningly.

Arturo knows when an argument is about to break into a fight between his girls. As much time as it’s been, he’ll never forget about how they react to each other. He springs into action, walking up to them and standing in between, not really touching either of his daughters — he remembers Rosa doesn’t like to be touched unprompted, and he knows Liz has an issue with touching when she’s bolting with anger.

“Stop it right now,” he says, the closeness to Rosa making his eyes water as he realizes he’s not dreaming. Rosa is in front of him, and he can even smell her, look her in the eye and make sure she’s real. “You two, it doesn’t matter anymore. Lo que _de verdad_ importa, is that we have Rosa back. Not that nonsense about Max Evans or Isobel or Michael being aliens, or Jim being anything else but a good person.”

He realizes his mistake way before his daughters do, and he tries to cover it up by allowing his tears to fall freely. He misses the way Alex arches an eyebrow at him, slowly piecing everything together. He doesn’t have to feign the happiness he feels when he finally pulls Rosa closer to him and she crashes into his chest with a loud _oof_ and her tears get mixed with his as she looks up. Liz collapses against them too, laughing as the motion makes her step on Arturo’s toes. “Mis niñas, juntas de nuevo,” he whispers, over and over again.

Arturo has seen many things in his life. He has survived many events, starting from the gangs in his youth and ending with the hate crimes that year after year razed the café. He’s not afraid of anything, not after losing his wife to a horrible illness and her daughter to a terrible death. He believes, always had, because he knows there’s something bigger than him watching over them, taking care of them — it can take the form of one god or another, of loved ones or memories of feelings someone once had. 

“Wait a moment, Arturo,” he hears Alex speak, interrupting their sweet gathering moment. Arturo wipes his tears but doesn’t let go of his daughters. “No one ever said Isobel or Michael were aliens. And we definitely never said Jim was anything _but_ a good person.”

Arturo sighs. Rosa leans up, pushing herself off his chest and looking up again at him, “Papi?” The magic is broken, and reality settles in. He has to make a choice, and it’s probably the second hardest decision of his life.

The first one had been leaving Mexico in the dead of the night, abandoning everything he knew and made him feel safe for a future he didn’t really believe in.

“I knew Jim was your biological father,” he tells Rosa. “Your mother was pregnant when I met her, and I accepted that because I loved her. You’ve always been my daughter, Rosa. You will always be.” There’s a pause as he lets the information he’s just dropped on them, before he lunges forward and comes clean with all the truths he’s known since he came to Roswell, way before he even learned to speak enough English to work his way through job applications.

“Dad?” Liz presses on. He can see her side is glowing through her blouse, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Rosa’s chest shimmering underneath her t-shirt. _It must be the handprint_ , he thinks. _Max might have saved them both, one way or another._

“Arturo,” Alex says, softer than before. “What about the aliens, then?”

“Jim told me the three kids they found in the desert were gifted in a way neither of ours could ever be. Asked us for help, but we couldn’t, not with Helena being—not while she wasn’t fine. I did the math on my own when Michael Guerin showed up in Roswell,” he explains. He stops, takes a breath, and plunges for the truth. “But I knew about aliens long before they came here,” he continues. “And the reason I know about aliens is because your father told me about them, Alex.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Maria doesn’t really know what’s going on inside Michael’s head once he calms down enough after the earthquake drains all the energy from him. He just remains slumped against her for the longest time, eyes closed, tears streaking down his cheeks, the only movement in him the shivers that cross up his spine and shatter him in pieces every time, the only sounds coming out of him the sobs that he can’t control.

She loses track of the time she spends with her back against one truck, legs cramping as she supports Michael’s weight with her arms around his waist, fingers soothing all the creases in his clothes and in his soul. The sun has long set behind the horizon when Michael stops shaking, but he keeps on rocking himself, his healed hand coming up to find one of hers. She sighs when he covers her fingers with his own, and a thought crosses her mind. _If his healed hand has something to do with alien powers_ , she thinks; she has yet to find out how Michael’s hand is fine now, why he didn’t get to heal it ten years ago. _If they can heal, what are the odds they could cure my mom?_. She doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to pry. She knows Michael is shaken enough right now as it is; she doesn’t want to put more pressure on him.

She, however, needs to move or else she risks never getting her legs to function ever again. She nudges him slightly, a simple pressure on the chest that’s now heaving with less violence. “Michael,” she whispers. “We have to get up. It’s getting colder.”

“Not cold,” comes the mumbled reply as he ducks his head further forward, his curls grazing her fingertips.

“I know you’re not cold,” she attempts to joke. “You’re like a furnace, always running hot. And please, don’t turn that into a pun,” she adds, trying to lighten the mood. “But I’m human. I get cold. Can we please get inside? I won’t let go of you, but I need to go somewhere warmer.”

Before she can even shove him playfully apart to get up, Isobelʼs voice breaks the silence and reaches them. “Michael! Michael, come on, where are you? I need you inside!” 

“See?” Maria tries to make him move. “Your sister needs you. Letʼs get inside and see what happens.” 

“Itʼs Max,” he mumbles, so soft that she has to strain to actually hear it. “I can feel him.” 

“You can feel your dead brother,” she repeats as she manages to move around him and tugs at his arm so he can stand up. He stumbles a little but he gets on his feet, staggering when he plants both his foot on the ground. 

“Not dead. Heʼs back.” 

Maria doesn’t say anything. There are tons of things for her to understand, and every single one of them can wait until they are inside and Michael is more centered. She thinks that, even if Michael doesn’t make any sense in a long while, at least Isobel could be able to give her answers. After all, maybe theyʼre going to see each other more these days, given that Maria thinks she’s dating Michael although they havenʼt put a label yet on their relationship. 

Regina George is going to be a fixture in her life if she pursues a relationship with Michael. 

“Letʼs go inside,” Maria nudges him. Michael begins stepping toward the building, Isobelʼs voice a beacon guiding him inside. Maria just follows him, ready to catch him whenever he falters, but Michael manages to get inside Isobelʼs house without falling to the ground. “Isobel,” Maria calls out at the same time as Michael flops down on a pristine couch. “Weʼre here!” 

The blonde shows up from a room on the right side of the living room. She takes a look at Michael and sighs. “You’re exhausted,” she says. “But you canʼt afford to be. Max needs us. He called for us to meet him at the Wild Pony.” 

“Excuse me?” Maria pipes in when itʼs obvious Michael wonʼt say a thing. “I donʼt understand.” 

“You donʼt need to,” Isobel replies icily. “I just need you to help me get my brother in the car.” 

“And to grant you access to my bar,” Maria retaliates. 

“Oh, I know the barʼs open,” Isobel says as she saunters toward the foyer and picks a coat. “You usually leave your bartenders to open the days youʼre off.” 

Mariaʼs about to say something back, to hurt Isobel Evans while she’s trying to diminish her, but she can see the tremble in Isobelʼs hand when she puts on her coat, and the lack of people in the house tells Maria that Isobel is completely alone. As though she only has Michael and Max, and right now it’s just Michael, whoʼs still spacing out on her couch. 

She chooses not to say anything. With a little effort, Isobel helps her to get Michael into Isobelʼs car and she follows them in her own truck. When they arrive to the bar, she can see a familiar car parked outside, among the very few that are around her parking lot the night before Thanksgiving. 

“What is Liz doing here?” he says to herself as she idles the car. “How did she know?” 

But whatever questions she has are lost in the midst of the violence of feelings she gets in waves coming from Isobelʼs car — fear and excitement and nervousness all mingled together. It’s hard for her to differentiate between Isobelʼs and Michael’s, so she doesn’t even try. When she reaches them, Michael seems a little more aware than before although he still stumbles forward. Isobel walks to the bar, all but forgetting about her brother. 

Maria slides an arm around Michael’s waist and helps him walk inside the bar. When the door closes behind them, she notices two things in quick succession. 

Liz is inside, frozen in place as she stares at the bar from a few feet away, not daring to get closer. She’s alone, and Maria is thankful that Alex hasnʼt tagged along. 

The other thing she notices is the tall, dark cowboy perched on the counter, peeking on the pictures and stickers she has gathered on the mirror on the wall. She goes about to greet him, ask him how he’s been even if it sounds absurd, but not even Isobel gets to beat her. 

Without turning around, Max points at one of the pictures, half hidden among the rest. Maria notices Liz hasnʼt moved, as though glued to the floor. She files it away for later, and follows Isobel and Michael as they approach Max. 

“Whoʼs that in the picture?” Max asks without preamble, without greeting. Isobel stops dead in her tracks; Maria forgets about the craziness that is having a dead man standing in her bar full of people as though he owns the place. It makes her wonder whether thereʼs a chance for other dead people to come back if Max can use his power rightly. 

“I said,” Max repeats, impatiently. “I said whoʼs in that picture with the man who looks like your grandfather.”

Maria shakes herself out of her stupor and moves forward. 

“That?” she asks, pointing at the picture hanging behind the counter, half hidden between the beer stickers and the different sketchy decorations. “She’s Louise, the first DeLuca. Why?”

“Because I’ve seen her in my visions,” Max says. Maria stares at him as she waits for him to elaborate. She still doesn’t understand how a photo can be more interesting, more important, than his own siblings who had thought him dead. Max simply looks at her, as though what he’s trying to say is difficult to comprehend.

“Just say it, Evans,” she urges him. All eyes are on them; Michael’s focus finally zeroed in on something that isn’t the tremble in his hands, Isobel’s pupils dilated in anticipation, as if they both can sense whatʼs to come. Maria realizes that maybe they do, if the three of them share a connection strong enough to compel them together with just a psychic call. “How come you saw my great-grandmother in the visions from when you were dead?”

“Louise DeLuca was her Earth name,” he explains. Maria has the inkling that she isn’t going to like where this is going. “Her birth name was Kedra, and she was from Antar.” There’s a pregnant pause as everyone draws a breath in, bracing themselves for Max’s next words. Maria leans in. She doesn’t think there’s anything else that might surprise her after all — after learning that aliens can resurrect people and they can heal, except they wouldn’t heal _her_ mother out of fear of being discovered. 

She realizes how mistaken she is when Max speaks again, his words sinking in the silence that surrounds them all.

“She was my biological mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter starts with an off-voice, very much the same as the show itself. This chapter is Maria's voice.
> 
> I'm sorry this is taking so long. I thought it would be easier, but changing jobs, a pandemic, and the show have proven to be difficult for different reasons for me. I still don't know when I will be posting the next chapter, or if they will end up being 13 chapters or 10, but I'm sure I will finish posting it before season 3 airs, hopefully. Because I'm slow like that.
> 
> As you have noticed, Forest isn't a Long in this. That's because I wrote this chapter, and the rest of the story that's already written, way before Forrest Long showed up in canon. So for me, he's Navajo, and he might have a few secrets. He's definitely not a historian, but he has nothing to do againss the charming man that Alex Manes is, believe me. And now that we're full-on AU territory, I wanted to thank you for sticking with me, and to let you know that I'll understand if you don't want to keep reading now that the show has started to create its own brand of rabbit holes. See you when I see you, hopefully sometime next month?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's taken me the best part of a year to update this. I could tell a couple of excuses, and they'd be true - but I don't want to. Life has been hard on everyone, and I am trying to stay afloat, that's all.
> 
> This chapter is unbeta'ed. And it's long. I hope you all enjoy it.
> 
> I can't promise when I will be updating this, but I can tell you that there is at least another chapter written that will see the light of day in a (hopefully) shorter span of time than this one.
> 
>  **Warning:** this is already an AU, so please keep that in mind.  
> Thanks for sticking with me!

> I know a thing or a thousand about being left behind. I’ve read poetry. I’ve quoted Neruda before, _hay heridas que en vez de abrirnos la piel, nos abren los ojos_. Mom leaving when I was six taught me not to believe anyone who claimed to love me. I’ve always felt like I never belonged anywhere. Como si, somewhere deep down, that first disappointment shaped me into the lost child I became, refusing to believe I’m worthy of love. And then, it was me who was leaving, all of a sudden. I’m back, now, but I’m not fearless. I’m still that little girl who cried every night for three years until she understood her mom wasn’t coming back.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

**1947**

“I told you not to call me _Louise_.” 

Kadja sighs, one foot into the command, words rapidly dying in her throat at the words practically barked at her. She closes her eyes and readies herself to face Louise – Kedra – again. 

“This is more important than your pettiness over a name,” Kovak chides her from his spot over at the comms station. Kadja has never been more grateful for their pod brother than in those moments when he could make Kedra shut up with just one sentence. “You were saying?” he continues, not even sparing a glance up at Kadja, but gesturing for her to keep talking. 

“It seems we might have a breach in security,” she says loudly. She’s rushed to her siblings the moment she’s known about the riot on the lower tanks in their spaceship. “Ragne and Perd are on it, but I doubt they can contain it for long. The crowd needs our commander to soothe their fears,” Kadja jabs directly to Kedra, not daring to call her by her human name but with a derisive tone in her voice. 

Sheʼs aware that, out of the three of them, Kedra is the one who wasnʼt too keen on leaving Antar despite the war and the attacks from both the rebels inside their ranks and their enemies from outer space. Kedra has been quite loud on her distaste of all things that make Antar the world Kadja loves – the way she’s always voiced her disgust at the human names theyʼve been given throughout the years is only one of them. Kedra has always hated the fact that they might have to flee Antar due to the growing war, the rebels wanting the power of the Chosen Ones all for themselves, the dying of their atmosphere making it impossible to even _think_ not to wander and find somewhere else to live. Kadja had fought her over and over, whenever she’s been teaching the kids to use their powers, because Kedra just wanted to keep the children in Antar while Kadja was preparing them to live somewhere else. 

One day, Kedra had interrupted their weekly session of Antar history with a thick book; Kadja had been able to read _Earth Through The Eons_ on the side. Kedra had ranted about how Earth wasnʼt safe for any of them, but especially for the kids – how humans had prosecuted, hunted, killed all of the Antarian diplomats sent to either study human life or to tighten relationships with the only other planet in the universe with the same kind of breathable atmosphere. Kadja had learned then that Earth hadnʼt been keen on Bowle – or Jesus, as they had named – or on the other healers sent by the Elders to help cure humanʼs diseases and appease their tendency to harm each other and their planet. 

Not that Antarians are any better, Kadja thinks sadly as she stands in front of her pod siblings in the spaceship they’ve taken to escape the latest attack on Antar. 

Kadja knows it took Kovak and his neverending faith in their bond to convince her that it was the right thing to do – save as many of their own as they could and try to start anew somewhere else, abandoning their initial idea of seeking shelter on Earth after the reports of their research team had come back not only negative but along with a letter written with the blood of one of Kovakʼs best generals. 

Kadja knows, because she can feel it through their bond, that Kedra isn’t happy that they left in the middle of the night. She knows Kedra can be reckless when upset. She’s thankful for Kovak and his way to calm them both when they don’t see eye to eye. But this time, she has to admit that maybe Kedra was right all along. 

Ragne and Perd have reported their fears of stowaways sabotaging their flight, and Mara hasnʼt paid them any attention until a fire had burst in the lower floors. That hadnʼt been an accident, but rather something meant to divert their trajectory and force them to land on the nearest planet to fix whatever was wrong – and the nearest planet is Earth. 

“I won’t be talking to insubordinates,” Kedra speaks loudly, still staring ahead of herself into the void that stretches before them all. “Let our security team deal with it, and bring the leaders to me. I'll deal with them.” 

“We do _not_ take justice on our own,” Kovak admonishes her. “I will check on Ragne and Perd, and I will talk to whoever itʼs necessary. Can you go make sure the kids are alright?” he asks of Mara, who nods curtly. 

She knows Kedra has been detaching herself from their kids ever since she was aware of their fate – ever since the lightning chose them to be their Chosen Ones, the trio to save the universe, or at least try. So itʼs Kadjaʼs task to take care of the three of them, reassuring the twins that their mother does, in fact, love them even if she’s too busy leading their escape. 

She leaves the command and all but runs to the chambers where they keep the children away from everyone else. The three of them – Kovak, Kedra, Kadja herself – donʼt want anyone to harm the kids, so they decided to lock them in one of the biggest chambers of the ship to prevent anyone from having weird thoughts about trading them for safety.

“Itʼs me,” she says as a way of greeting after closing the door at her back. “How are my kids?” 

She’s been refraining from using their mother tongue, but she doesn’t know where they will land so she tends to project the words in Antarian. The children will have time to learn whatever language they need to speak when they find a safe place to hide. Before sheʼs even finished her thought, she finds herself with a handful of her own son, who hugs her tight with a force that suggests her that he is scared. The twins follow suit, and she embraces them fiercely. 

“Iʼm here now,” she says in a soothing tone, using her voice instead of projecting. “No need to be scared,” she keeps on, when suddenly they all hear something creaking – loud enough to overpower the ever-present noise of a spaceship full of people. The structure falters, and Mara has to hold onto the three kids in the best way possible, fingers grabbing her son by the sleeve of his tunic as she tries to keep the twins glued to her side. She twists when the ship tilts to one side, so itʼs her back that collides against the nearest surface when they skid along with the craft. 

“Mom?” Rath asks from his spot on top of her, clutching to her purple and white robes with his tiny hands, the twins trembling silently, and Kadja has to shake her head, because she’s been used to calling him by his Antarian name in her mind, but given how things are developing maybe she needs to start using the human name that was shown to her in a vision. 

“Everything will be okay, youʼll see,” she tells them. The ship stops shaking after her words, and she takes it as a sign to dare to peek out the door. 

She wishes she hadnʼt. 

There’s chaos everywhere – some of the passengers have gone out of their chambers, running through the halls yelling unceremoniously. The crew is nowhere to be seen; Kadja doesn’t dare to move from their own room so she closes the door and presses her back to it. She knows her weight wonʼt keep the door from being yanked open, but she has to do something. 

The ship falters and tilts to the right; everything on flat surfaces comes tumbling down on the floor, Kadja’s hands holding tighter on the children who are looking up at her with panic in their bright eyes. The ship rattles and shakes, and then it stops moving altogether as though it’s hit something. Kadja gets her shields up, her own powers protecting her and the twins and Rath, casting a field around them that nothing can trespass, not even the sharper objects flying around the room.

“Go to the back,” she instructs the kids, expanding the extent of her powers so the field surrounds the children as they run to the back of the room. Kadja sighs when they’re safely tucked away behind a fallen table, prodding at her connection to Kedra and Kovak to see if theyʼre within reaching range.

To see if they are still alive. 

Kedra replies almost instantly, _stay put, I’m coming for you_ , but Kovak’s presence in the back of her mind is dimmer than ever. Kadja shivers against the door. She doesn’t want to lose either of them.

It feels like ages before Kedra is knocking on the door, asking for permission to enter among the chaos, both in Kadja’s mind and with her own voice so the kids don’t get more scared than they already are. She sounds strained; Kadja hastens to open the door enough for Kedra to enter, but she has to widen the space when she sees her pod sister is dragging an almost unconscious Kovak with her. “He got in the way of the attack,” Kedra explains simply when she manages to get them both inside the chambers and closes the door once again with her weight. 

“If you two are here,” Kadja begins saying from her spot kneeling beside Kovak. “Who’s out there commanding the ship?”

“Haven’t you noticed the slight _crash landing_ we just went through?” Kedra snarls at her, not once checking in on the kids. “We’re no longer flying.”

“What?” Kadja all but screeches. She’s felt the hit but she hasn’t really registered they have landed – crashing or not. “Where? Where, Kedra?” she repeats, almost hysterically, when her pod sister doesn’t reply.

The noise of bullets being shot and yells being screamed in a language Kadja recognizes is all the answer she needs. Kedra looks at the door with a defensive stance in her movements, while Kadja tries to lift Kovak from the floor. Their pod brother doesn’t budge, the connection feeble as it dies down slowly. “Kovak!” she cries out. Kedra can’t really turn around, but Kadja feels the grief in the back of her mind when Kovak’s warm presence vanishes, his breathing evening out until it’s only a memory.

Kedra nods ahead, signaling the open door. “Iʼll go out first, you follow me,” she instructs. “Whatever happens, Kadja, get them to somewhere safe.” 

Before Kadja can reply, Kedra is already out the door, checking the halls and moving around like the great general of the Antar army that she was born to be. Kadja motions for the kids to follow her, and she keeps a force field up just in case. 

The ship is a complete wreck. The five of them advance slowly through the fires started everywhere, Kedra stepping sure with her firearm stretched in front of her, Kadja keeping the children safe with her own body and the strength of her mind. They walk toward the back of the ship, led by Kedra who shares her plan with Kadja through their connection – she wants to place the kids in the pods and try to find a place for them to be hidden until they have ensured the perimeter. Kadja agrees; they need to keep the children safe, even if it means they will have to be alone for a while. 

“Weʼll be back soon enough,” Kedra assures her when Kadja sends her doubts through the connection. “No time for them to forget about us.” 

“But if it takes us more than a dozen Earth years–” Kadja dares to talk. 

“Weʼll come back before they lose their memories, Kadja. I promise.” Kedra shakes her head before taking a turn, her eyes boring holes in the kids who are looking up at them both in silence. “Just keep them together, Kadja.”

The words cut deep in Kadjaʼs soul, the loss of Kovak still fresh inside of them – their link spasming at the end of her mind, on the very edges of the darkness that builds up inside of them, sparks threatening to catch fire and burn them both to ashes. 

She’s taken out of her pain by the hiss of bullets fired around them. She gets hit by something she can’t register, causing her to falter and fall to her knees, still before the children, repressing a wail when the pain cuts through her arm. When she focuses once again on her new reality, she sees them surrounded by uniforms and arms aimed at their heads. Kadja gasps, one arm reaching behind her in a protective gesture. Kedra pushes on their link, getting through the haze of the pain to reach her core. _Remember your task_ , she hears in her mind. _Save them_. 

Kadja nods briefly, rising to her feet with a small growl. The field is back in place, although the strength needed to keep it up is slowly draining her. 

Kedra fires against the attackers and then she commands Kadja to run, leaving behind the fires and the bullets until they all reach the open air. The atmosphere is similar to Antarʼs; they spend a few seconds getting used to it before spotting a sort of barn and what looks like a farm relatively close. “Just a few more miles,” Kadja instructs the kids. “Run!” 

But before they can start running away, they are once again surrounded by these humans who have hunted them ever since the wreck. 

“Get them away!” Kedra yells over the noise of the crackling fire, ducking out on bullets that are aimed their way. “Kadja! Protect the children!”

Kadja wants to scream back that it’s the only thing on her mind ever since the lightning chose them as babies, but she’s too busy trying to use her own body as a shield from the attack. The three kids are whimpering, scared and cowering behind her back. Kadja bites her lower lip as she pushes them even further away from the wrecked ship. She doesn’t have time to explain, but she wishes she could – the twins are trying to reach for their mother, and Kadja doesn’t have the strength to keep them from running over to her if they want to.

She knows what it would do to her, if she had to watch her son being shot.

She knows she’d have gone crazy with grief.

Kadja knows she can’t help Kedra now, not when her task is to protect the kids. She brings up the field again, and runs with them to the barn, the humans hot on their heels. They trip, they stumble, but they don’t fall – Kadjaʼs powers are beginning to thin out but she keeps forcing it up, even if itʼs the only thing she’ll ever do. 

They reach the farm and run inside, checking all the doors to see if there’s someone who can help them – someone who’s not scared of firearms and uniforms. 

The place is deserted, and the humans are so close Kadja can feel the bullets sing around them.

“Get back!” Kadja yells, pushing the kids against the furthest wall. There’s a door on it, hanging broken off its hinges. She knows whatever they find inside won’t be alive. She’s been told about this species – about the brutality of their actions, about their tendency to shoot first and ask later – and she doesn’t want to risk the children’s safety. She has to find the right chamber, she has to hide them away until the right time comes. 

It’s too early. They aren’t ready. They’re crying, calling for Kedra and shaking in fear. Kadja feels her pod sister in her mind, still alive, but their connection is dying. Whether itʼs from the distance or something else, Kadja canʼt be sure. She pushes the kids inside the room and closes the door. She wishes they had enough time to be ready for whatʼs to come. 

“Donʼt be scared,” she tells them, taking in their fear, their tears and their big eyes. “Iʼll be back soon enough.” 

She closes her eyes and focus, summoning the pods from where they are, hidden in the depths of the wrecked ship. She can feel the force pulling at her, the weight of the shining ovals sinking in her mind. She doesn’t care if the sight is too scary for humans. 

She has to save her son, and Kedraʼs twins. 

It takes all her strength to land the three pods next to the farm; she urges the kids to get out through a window, and tries to convince them to step inside. 

“Youʼll be fine,” she promises when Vilandra whimpers. “Iʼll be back with your mom in no time.” 

“Mom,” Rath calls to her. The humans are circling near them, there’s no time left. “Iʼll take care of them,” he promises. 

“Good boy,” she tells him, her last words to her son as she forces them inside the pods. She watches them twist inside the narrow space, an ache in her soul nailing at her heart. Then she closes her eyes, focuses on the land broad in her mind, and chooses a place she has never been to but thatʼs clear in her inner eye. She pushes and pushes, and the pods float in the air. With a last effort, she sends them to the cave she’s seen in her mind, and causes a small rockfall to block the entrance. 

“Hands up!” she hears at her back. “Drop your weapons and lift your hands in the air!” 

Kadja searches their connection for Kedraʼs warmth, and she can feel her pod sister but itʼs weak and trembling. If she pushes a bit further, she might be able to see where’s Kedra, what’s happening to her. Kadja doesn’t have much time left before she decides to fight or surrender, but she chooses to make sure her pod sister is at least in a better shape than her, now that they both have lost their children and Kovak.

With her inner eye, Kadja can see exactly what Kedra sees – a vast expanse of desert, a moon shining up in the sky, the darkness surrounding her only broken by the flashlights of the humans hunting her. She’s panting, her steps faltering. Kadja wants to cry out for her, but Kedra ran in the opposite direction to create a diversion from them. As Kadja watches, Kedra reaches a different barn, someplace where she might be able to lose the hunters. Kedra hides behind a pile of hay, breath uneven, trembling and terrified – Kadja can feel it through their bond.

“Are you okay?” Kadja hears, a soft voice coming from Kedra’s left. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

When they both look up – Kedra in situ, Kadja through the bond – a man is standing tall inside the barn, a stick ready in his hand. Kedra shivers but doesn’t reply.

“Ma’am, do you understand me?” he keeps on, this time kneeling next to Kedra and touching her arm. “C’mon, let me help you up. I live right here, it’s close.” Kedra just allows him to help her, and before they can take a step in the right direction, the noise of the hunters weirdly far away, the man speaks again, “I’m Bronson.”

Kedra ponders what to reply in her mind, the bond throbbing with her doubts, and Kadja sends her the only words she can think of, _tell him your Earth name, Kedra, and go back to the kids_ , as she sends her pod sister the coordinates of the cave she’s hidden the pods into. Kedra nods in her barn, miles removed from Kadja, and simply says, “Louise.”

Kadja shuts the connection down, her own body closing off due to the pain and the exhaustion. At least Kedraʼs alive, she tells herself before turning around and surrendering to the humans whoʼve finally caught up with her, in a barn in the middle of nowhere.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

**1998**

“Phil,” Ann pushes at his arm, sleepily. “Phil, the phone’s ringing.”

He groans, opening one eye and checking the hour on the nightstand clock he keeps close to the bed. It’s barely two fourteen in the morning, and the noisy blaring of their landline is shrilling through the silence in the house. “I’ll go pick it, it’s probably some prank. Go back to sleep.”

He limps his way to the device downstairs, chiding himself about how they decided not to have a phone in the bedroom, massaging his left leg where it’s fallen asleep on him. The phone is ringing and ringing endlessly, but before he can reach the office to pick it up, it grows quiet. Phil sighs, swearing under his breath, ready to leave the phone off its hook, when the sound comes back full force. Through his initial distress, he picks it up.

“Phil Evans,” he says, almost angrily. “Do you think it’s a reasonable time to call?” He doesn’t know who’s on the other side, he just thinks it’s bad taste to bother people in their homes in the middle of the night.

“Evans,” he hears, and that shaky voice isn’t what he’d been expecting at all. “The time’s come.”

“Valenti,” he greets softly, barely audible. “I’ll get dressed. Will be by the precinct in half an hour.”

“Make it fifteen minutes,” Sheriff Valenti commands, authoritative and curt, before hanging up.

When Phil looks up from his spot standing next to the phone table, Ann is waiting for him on the threshold, body wrapped in a nightgown that floats around her in the nightly breeze. “What’s going on, Phil?” she demands in a whisper. “Was it Jim?”

“Yes,” he admits, nodding. “Get dressed. The time he warned us about has come. He needs us.”

“I’ll be ready in five,” she promises. And she delivers, dressed and tapping the wooden floor of their porch with her sandals as he picks up the car keys and a jacket, just in case. Summer nights in the desert can get really cold.

“Let’s go,” he urges her, clicking the doors open and jumping inside. In his haste, he almost doesn’t wait for her to buckle up before revving up and driving away from their house in downtown Roswell – a nice building in a nice neighborhood with nice neighbors who have become friends. They’re silent as he takes them through the deserted streets, stopping abruptly in front of the precinct, sparing no time in killing the engine and sauntering out. 

He helps Ann out of the car and walks with her hastily inside. “Sheriff Valenti called us,” he tells the Deputy sitting at the front desk. The young woman – not older than twenty-five, he thinks – gestures to the open door to her left, where Phil knows Jim Valenti’s office is.

They walk through the threshold and are greeted by dark circles under dark eyes and a sleepy gaze that holds Phil’s when he says, “we’re here, Valenti.”

“The kids have shown up,” the Sheriff deadpans, not wasting any time in pleasantries. “It’s just like the archives and what the DeLuca elder said, and what we’ve gathered from our, uh, research at Caulfield.” He has the decency to look bashful under Ann’s scrutiny, both of them aware of what the military and Jim Valenti have been doing at the prison barely a hundred miles up the road from Roswell. 

The Evans family have been in the secret of Caulfield – of aliens and conspiracies – for several generations now, ever since the first crash in 1947; Phil’s father had been summoned by Harlan Manes Jr and Thomas Valenti for his medical knowledge, and their sons had been brought in the family legacies. But sometime along the way, Phil and Jim had seen Jesse fall down into darkness, and they’ve been trying to help him out of it for decades now.

“How many?” Ann questions without blinking. She’s known about the prophecy and the kids born to save a war-torn world for a few months now. They haven’t known how many of them, but they’re about to find out.

“Three,” Jim tells them. “Let’s go, I’ve brought them here before taking them to the group home. I wanted to show you beforehand.”

Ann watches as the Sheriff stands up and surround his desk, and she can’t help herself – she reaches out to help him when Jim loses his feet and stumbles forward. It turns out he doesn’t need her help, for he grips the edge of the desk and finds his ground once again; Ann’s left with an outstretched arm and a worried look upon her face. 

“This way,” Jim shows them when he manages to stand on his feet long enough not to wobble. “It’s been a long night, and I’m afraid it’s only the beginning,” he excuses himself as he walks in front of them, guiding both Phil and Ann through the darkened halls of the precinct to the back of the building, where the cells for the most dangerous delinquents are. 

As they walk, Ann feels a cold creeping up her spine. She can’t imagine three lost kids staying even a single second in the cells purposeful built for criminals. She can’t wait for them to take the children out and provide them with a warm bed and a roof over his heads.

“I have to warn you,” Jim states, stopping dead in his tracks in front of one of the soundproof cells, “one of the kids is wild.”

“What do you mean, wild?” Phil asks, his arm tightening around Ann’s waist. 

“He doesn’t stop screaming and he tries to escape at any moment,” Jim explains. “That’s why I brought them here, because he wouldn’t stop yelling but the other two wouldn’t leave his side.”

“You threw them into a dark cell because one of the children was scared enough to _scream_?” Ann asks, her tone accusing. She rushes next to the door of the cell, almost shoving both men out of her way. “And what did you expect, Jim? That they would go along? That they’d stop being scared?” She’s seething, her blonde locks trembling in time with her words. “Open the cell, Jim, and don’t you dare lock them up _again_.”

Jim does as told, Ann doesn’t know if it’s whether he’s scared of her outburst or because it was his plan all along, and the Evans get ready for what’s to come when the door creaks and opens. First of all, they hear a wail, almost inhuman, followed by sobs and a childish-like voice. What they see when they peek over the open door freezes the blood in Ann’s veins.

There are three kids gathered in the farthest corner of the cell; two boys and a girl in varying degrees of dressing. The girl, blueish eyes under too long blonde locks, is wearing a dress that once was pink, one hand clutching a filthy blanket while with the other she’s holding onto one of the boys, tall and dark with eyes like endless pools, swimming in a shirt at least three sizes too large that covers for the lack of trousers. The third boy – curly hair and wild hazel eyes – is stark naked and trying to climb the walls, screaming at the top of his lungs in a language that sounds animalistic to Ann’s ears.

“We found them completely lost,” Jim tells them. “They were holding onto that blanket,” he keeps explaining.

“Do they have names?” Phil asks, unsure about how to proceed. Ann can tell he’s nervous – they haven’t faced anything like this _ever_ in their lives – but at least he’s trying. When they learned about the three kids in the pods, through one of the elders captured in Caulfield, they didn’t ask anything. They didn’t even bother to understand what would happen.

They had just known those kids would need their help. But she doesn’t know how she can help the boy with the climbing tendencies who is now looking back at them, feral and disgruntled. He’s making a sound in the back of his throat that’s echoing off the walls. Ann’s heart clenches at the noise.

“I have a strong feeling that the girl’s name is Isobel,” Jim says. “Don’t ask me why, I just know. She looked at me and I could hear that name so clearly in my _mind_.”

“And the boys?” There’s a sliver of awe in Phil’s voice as he speaks. Ann doesn’t find it in herself to move, too mesmerized by the sight of the girl’s fair eyes that have caught her under some sort of spell.

“Max,” she says, pointing at the serious-looking kid. “Can’t you feel it? He’s Max.”

“Yeah, I do,” Phil agrees. They focus on the curly-haired one, but as he keeps grunting and growling at them, Ann doesn’t feel anything. It’s like she’s hit a wall and she can’t walk through it. “But the other one–”

“I don’t know,” Ann tells them both. Jim nods his assent while Phil just grips her hip a little bit tighter. “It’s like they’re talking to us, like they want us to understand and take them in. But he–”

“He doesn’t,” Jim shakes his head. “He’s been aggressive and fighting back ever since that truck driver called the department. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I think he needs help,” Ann muses. “He needs someone to take care of him, but, Jim, Phil and I aren’t those people.” She tries to shake the feeling nagging at the back of her head, a voice suspiciously sounding so similar to her mother’s that it’s scaring her, _you’re making a mistake_. “Promise me you’ll find someone to look after him, someone who’s in the secret,” she adds as an afterthought.

“I promise,” Jim says when Phil takes a step forward into the cell, only to walk back again when the curly-haired boy hurls himself onto him. He doesn’t actually manage to reach any of them – Ann is pretty sure the girl, _Isobel_ , is keeping him from moving further away from her with just one look – but he scares the three adults. “We need to get them to the group home in the morning. Go there in a few days. Gimme some time to work on their papers.”

“We can’t allow Jesse to get his hands on them,” Phil states. “Do you think they have powers?”

“I believe they do,” Jim starts closing the cell door slowly. “I mean, it’s evident the girl is holding back the other two somehow, or else the aggressive one would have attacked us. But I’m not sure if they’re _aware_ they do.”

“They’re not animals,” Ann pipes in when the door’s completely closed. The sound grills her insides. “Stop talking about them like they’re not _human_.”

“They aren’t, Ann!” Jim exclaims, lifting his hands up in the air. “You know they aren’t! They’re feral, and there’s nothing we can do about it but try and help the ones who want to be helped!”

“So we’re just abandoning the other boy, just because he can’t tell us his name?”

“No,” Phil tries to reason with her. “We’re not abandoning anyone. We’re making sure he gets the help he needs, while we take care of the others.”

Ann isn’t so sure that they’re doing the right thing, but when five days later she comes along her husband into the group home to pick up two kids, she glances briefly at the kid she’s leaving behind, willing herself to look away because she can’t help him – none of them can.

When they’re almost leaving the building, Isobel holding her hand and Max holding Phil’s, she can hear a name in her head, loud and messy but crystal clear. She won’t be able to shake the feeling of uneasiness it leaves her with, as Isobel turns her head with a cry and Max holds back his own tears.

 _Michael_.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

**2015**

All her life, Charlie had been following her big sister’s steps. Where Jenna went, everyone could see Charlie stumbling behind her, chubby legs when she was a toddler, long strides when they both grew up. Charlie had always looked up to her sister, and when their parents passed away in that terrible accident when she was barely seventeen — Jenna had been nineteen, already in the Army, and she’d come back to mourn their parents and make sure Charlie had everything she needed. Charlie had spent the following seven months with their aunt in Montana until she’d turned eighteen.

Then she’d enlisted, just like Jenna, but they never got to serve together.

They’d got their matching tattoos the first leave they managed to steal in together, at some shady ink parlor in Wisconsin. Charlie had been elated at the time; she’d been twenty, freshly out of basic training and ready to take on the world one war at a time, and Jenna had gifted her the tattoo design, just for them.

A bird, split in two, so each of them had one half of the design and they could never forget about each other, no matter where they were or how long they’d be separated.

Right now, Charlie wishes the tattoo was a beacon so she could summon Jenna and ask her what to do.

Charlie has been working for the US Army Intelligence for half a year now, a job that she’s found out to be perfectly fit for. She’s a code breaker, she can hack into almost any computer in the world, but her superiors had thought she could be more useful stateside and she hadn’t been deployed with the units flying to Iraq. Instead, she’s sitting behind a screen at a high-security facility in Vermont, typing away on her keyboard the codes and number sequences that might save so many lives across the globe.

What no one knows, not even Jenna, is that Charlie has other responsibilities, a night job within the military, a top-secret assignment that landed one day on top of her desk and that has been giving her endless headaches ever since.

She’s trying her best not to be bored by the monotony of her day job, but her eyes keep dropping down. Charlie rubs at her face and stands up, asking for a relief that’s granted easily, after sitting in the same position for almost four hours straight. She roams the halls, in search of the bathroom, as she fishes her phone and checks it. Jenna hasn’t called or texted back, but Charlie hasn’t been expecting it — her sister’s coming back from her second tour, and she isn’t landing from Iraq for at least another five hours. Still, Charlie types a quick message into the screen and places the phone back in her pocket. She will hear from her sister whenever she gets a second to reply to texts.

She watches her own reflection on the mirror when she gets past the swinging doors of the bathroom. She’s looking tired, there are dark bags under her eyes, and her blonde hair is in a messy bun. She quickly fixes it — she’s not allowed to wear a hairstyle that’s not tight buns and perfect ponytails — and sighs as she washes her hands and splashes some water on her face. She needs a breather, but until the deployed soldiers are safe in their new spots, she won’t get one. That’s what she does, these days — securing posts all around warzones so American soldiers can have somewhere to come back to, even in the nightmare that Iraq and Afghanistan and all those other deserts have become. She can’t tell Jenna, evidently, and she hasn’t been assigned to any of the Iraq posts due to her sister actually being deployed there. They’d call it a conflict of interests. Charlie calls it being douchebags, but she can’t call _that_ to the face of her superiors.

This assignment is just dragging; the posts in Afghanistan that she’s trying to secure are feeble at best, and to top it all she’s working along with the Air Force given that they’d sent their best codebreaker to an active warzone. Charlie just knows that she doesn’t need to be stressing so much because someone up in the ranks decided it was cool to risk their best hacker’s life. She’ll get to talk to him in a few hours, make sure everything is working just right, and then she will be able to go back to her tiny apartment and wait for her sister to call her back.

She needs to hear Jenna’s voice, even if it’s only in her head as she reads out loud the words her sister can text her. She needs that anchor to reality, just like when they were teenagers and she had boy problems. Right now, Charlie needs her big sister’s advice, because she actually has something similar to _boy problems_.

If Charlie had known everything she was signing up for when she’d jumped at the chance of working with the son of Air Force legend Jesse Manes, she would have _never_ accepted the challenge. But she’d been greedy, she’d been proud — she’d thought she was good enough to be part of the elite, of the chosen ones who could change the course of war actions and be remembered for their milestones.

How mistaken she’s been. She’s tried to prepare herself for the downfall of her wronged decisions, for the consequences that it might have on her career. She isn’t sure she’s ready, but whenever she has doubts — and she’s had tons of doubts these past days — she just conjures Jenna’s face and her frown whenever Charlie does something inappropriate, and her voice carries on through the midst of her memories.

_Honor above everything else, Char. Be true to yourself and your principles. That’s all we have, in this life._

She keeps looking at herself in the mirror, but she’s lost in memories of sweaty bodies, rumpled sheets, and that damned screen that kept beeping and beeping, catching her attention, until she’d had to get up from the bed and just _check_. And what she found out — the secret behind the Project Shepherd system she’d been assigned to control and secure — what she found out had nearly destroyed her.

Afterwards, she’d think that he might have done it on purpose, leaving the computer unattended and beeping. As though he’d been looking for it, for a way to redeem all his sins. Charlie doesn’t think there’s another plausible explanation for what she found, offered to her in a silver platter of images and sounds, grainy and distorted.

The security cameras had been showing things that shouldn’t be there — there were _people_ in the cells, old women and men covered in rags, shaved heads and frames so thin that Charlie had had to look twice sometimes to actually decide whether those chests were heaving in sleep or not. She’d checked again, switching from one camera to another until she’d been watching straight into the distribution hall, the numbers engraved next to the doors giving her an idea of how many prisoners were being held up in this facility. Charlie had kept watching the live feed as a man in a military uniform she’d recognized, rank clear in his sleeves, had stopped in front of one of the cells and looked down at the clipboard he’d been holding. He’d punched a code into the keyboard next to the glass door and it had opened up to him. She’d moved to the correct camera and had watched on as the man in uniform grabbed a female prisoner by the filthy clothes and dragged her out. Charlie had found enough strength to follow them through the different cameras to an aseptic room full of machines and tubes and straps that had looked like a torture chamber. She’d wished she was wrong. She’d drawn in a shaky breath; she’d taken her clothes and rushed off his apartment as fast as she’d been able to, not even saying goodbye. Knowing that her time of solace and happiness with who she thought could be the one — ranks be damned — had been cut short, severed by the blade of secrets and pain.

She needed to tell someone. She _had_ to tell someone. 

And that’s what she’s doing right now, after her shift making sure the troops are safe in Afghanistan with the help of that Air Force codebreaker who has been sent to an active warzone. She’s appointed an interview with her CO, and she’s going to spill everything. She doesn’t care that Project Shepherd is a high-level security program — she’s seen how they torture _people_ in there, and she’s pretty sure that’s something neither the military nor the Pentagon is aware of. 

The door to the bathroom opens suddenly, and the last person she would have expected to come in steps near the sinks. Charlie looks at him through the mirror, her eyes roaming that face that she’s been obsessed with for months before he took that first step toward her — the deep dark eyes, the dip of his jaw, the scar next to his right eye. 

“What are you doing here, Flint?” she asks straight away. She’s done with being cautious and respectful. She doesn’t even care that heʼs a higher-ranked officer. 

Charlie just wants to forget she’s ever known anything about Jesse Manes and his crazy idea that aliens plague the Earth, and that includes the son that convinced her of great things and seduced her to follow them. 

“I donʼt have much time,” he sounds desperate, and when she looks closely he looks like it as well. “Theyʼre coming for you, Charlie. Iʼve tried to protect you, but I failed. Your only chance is to make a scene so embarrassing that they have to acknowledge _him_ taking you. If he gets his way, youʼll be locked up in Caulfield in no time.” 

It isn’t necessary that Flint specifies. Charlie knows exactly who heʼs talking about. The shadow of Jesse Manes is long enough to cover everything in its wake.

She knew that it could end up like this, with Jesse Manes hunting her for knowing too much, for wanting to tell the truth. Somehow, one of the most powerful men in the military has a way to be aware of everything around the barracks. It doesnʼt surprise her that heʼs gotten to her before she can talk to anyone. 

Sending Flint — thatʼs a real surprise. Charlie doesn’t know what to make out of it all. 

“What does he have on you, Flint?” she asks, turning around and facing him. He shrugs noncommittally, a strangled noise coming out of his throat, and Charlie realizes that she doesn’t really know him at all even after sharing his bed so many times that she’s lost count. “ _What_?” 

But he doesn’t answer, he just slips back outside, and leaves her wondering if itʼs just been a mirage. 

Charlie’s coming back from the bathroom a few minutes later, face refreshed and spirits high up again, ready to take in the second half of her job before gathering up enough courage to do what needs to be done, when an assault team stops her in the middle of the corridor. She remembers Flintʼs words and yells and shrieks and demands that her rights are respected, so the men let her loose but keep their firearms pointing to her. Jesse Manes walks out of the shadows with a contrite mask over his features, and Charlie has to stop herself before spitting on him. 

“Charlotte Rebecca Cameron, you are under arrest for spreading nation-wide secrets.” He waves his hand in the air and the soldiers let their guns down and grab her by her arm. “Take her away.” He sounds so sure, so full of himself, that Charlie stomps her feet on the ground instead of actually spitting on him.

“You know thatʼs not true!” she cries as one of the military men tugs at her sleeve to make her follow them. “I would never!” 

“Cuff her,” Manes orders as she wriggles and fights, as people peek out to curiously see what’s going on. Charlie can see the moment he realizes that he’s gathering witnesses, because he drops his act and a wave of rage crosses his face before he can school his features again. “Unless you willingly decide to come with us.”

Flint nods almost imperceptibly before hiding again in the shadows. Charlie sighs and allows the soldiers to push her around unceremoniously. Several people are outside their cubicles, watching as sheʼs stripped of all her dignity, dragged across the floor to the elevator. She looks around for Flint again, and sees him behind his father, face down and shoulders slumped, and not for the first time she wonders how heʼs ended up enlisted. Heʼs always had musician’s fingers. 

She’s taken out of her thoughts as she trips and gets herself destabilized. She trips over her feet and collides against Flint, who catches her with his strong hands, pulling her into an embrace that could pass for anything but that.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against her ear as he helps her up. “I’ll get you out, I promise. Whatever it takes.”

“Don’t make promises you don’t count on keeping,” she bursts out, shoving him away and earning herself a push from the guards. Flint simply nods, but she can see his gaze is guarded, clouded by something similar to regret.

As he steps aside to let her pass, following her guards, with Jesse Manes poking at her for trying to destabilize his well-adjusted mechanism, Charlie can see flickers of green in his eyes. There’s a fire there, a promise that reminds her of lazy Sunday mornings in bed and the words carved in her skin as he bit on the flesh between her shoulder and the base of her neck. 

“I’ll take care of you,” heʼd promised. Sheʼd believed him. 

“I am innocent!” she cries out as she walks past everyone. Flint remains in her spot, silent and paralyzed. Charlie wishes sheʼd known where she accepted the special task that has led her to her befall. 

The silence that meets her when sheʼs forced to enter a Humvee with tinted Windows is deafening.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

**2018**

“So, what exactly are you saying here, Deputy Evans?” Maria asks when Max stops his retelling if the hallucinations she’s sure heʼs had while in the pod. “That my great-grandmother and your mother are the same person? That we are related? That I am—I am like _you_?” 

She’s moved behind the counter while Max talked about interstellar civil wars and stowaway sabotaging spaceships. Sometime in between him explaining that the ship was designed to host only a few of them and the fact that he believed his mother was her relative, Maria had grabbed a cloth and had begun cleaning the bar to have something to focus on. 

Max’s words are threatening to upend her world, and she’s not sure whether she’s ready for that. 

“Are you afraid that being part alien is going to affect your life?” Isobel demands from her spot next to Michael, whoʼs currently slumped on a stool with no drink in hand but swaying as though heʼs been downing the entre bar. “Didnʼt you know? How could you _not_ know?” 

Before Maria can reply, Liz steals the words from her. “Your necklace! Your mom gave it to you as a graduation gift, didn’t she?” Liz takes a tentative step toward the bar but she’s still keeping her distance from Max. Maria doesn’t know what to think about it. “The necklace has that yellow pollen inside,” she explains. “It could be killing your powers in case they were strong enough to manifest.” 

“Can we please not use that word?” Max pleads, hands on top of the counter, fingers splayed menacing. “Everythingʼs already awkward as it is.” 

“Which one?” Michael pipes in, suddenly not exhausted enough to be spacing out. “Pollen? Powers?” He chuckles before he smacks his own forehead in comprehension. “Oh, wait. You’re uncomfortable because Liz used the word _killing_?” 

Maria knows she shouldn’t. She knows she should stick to her job as a bartender and forget this conversation. She knows she should kick them all out and end everything that hasnʼt even started between Michael and herself. She should have stepped away the moment she learned about aliens. She should have ignored the way her heart fluttered whenever Michael was around her, the moment she knew about Alex’s feelings. 

She asks, anyway. 

“Why are you so hung up on that, Max?” she demands. “Is it because you know who killed Racist Hank in my parking lot?” She watches as he flinches. “Or is it something else?” 

Liz takes a step back from Max, although she has never really reached him since they all entered the bar. Maria thinks she’s onto something, but she doesn’t know what. She can bet, she can play, though. She can guess. 

“Why were you in that pod, Max? Why did you need to recharge?” A sudden realization downs on her and she stares at them all with wide eyes. “Did you kill Hank?” 

Max shakes his head, and Maria exhales. Michael, however, huffs out a sarcastic laugh that tells Maria that she isn’t on a bad track. “But you did kill someone.” It isn’t a question, it’s an affirmation. 

Just as Isobelʼs reply, that comes unleashed with bitter notes around her words. “It was self-defense,” she says, but her words waver at the end and Maria believed she’s trying to convince herself as well as the others. 

“Iʼm sure as a deputy, you have had to defend yourself several times,” Maria sighs, leaning in and leaving the cloth she’s been using as armor on top of the counter. “Killing someone in self-defense doesn’t make you a murderer.” 

“But we all are murderers, arenʼt we?” Michael finally says. “We have all killed, havenʼt we?” 

“What are you talking about?” Maria asks at the same time as Isobel cuts them both. 

“Enough, Michael. You know thatʼs not true.” She looks over Michael’s curls to Max, whoʼs looking back with a frown. Maria reads his aura clearly for the first time in a long while — heʼs scared, heʼs confused, but whatever secret they are hiding, Max doesn’t want Michael to spill anything. 

“You said you wanted to start over. You said it was time to let the past behind,” Michael barks out, looking sideways to Isobel. “I canʼt. I canʼt forget, canʼt you see? I just _canʼt_!” 

Maria wants to ask again, but Isobel shakes her head and places a hand on Michael’s shoulder, appeasing him momentarily. She decides that she can drop the issue for now — Michael’s really messed up right now, after the effort of not being able to control his powers, after losing his brother and getting him back. Maria chooses to change topics and addresses Max instead — she has the feeling that heʼs the one who holds all the answers. 

“So, if Michael can provoke earthquakes and move stuff with his mind, what are your powers?”

“We can have any power,” Max says roughly, looking up at Isobel just briefly. “Isobel holds all the powers, and she can give them to us if pointed correctly that way. Sadly, there’s no one left to help her with that.” 

“Because I killed them!” Michael almost screams. “Because I killed my mom! I killed her, I did, I—” 

“You know thatʼs not true,” Max tells him, voice hard and eyes guarded. “It was an accident.” 

“Just like that drifter was an accident? Noah? Rosa?” 

Maria sees the moment Michael realizes the weight of his words hanging over them, the secret that seems to be looming over them. The knowledge she can tell they don’t want her to acquire. “What do you mean, Noah? _Rosa_?” A dread pools in her gut, a feeling she can’t shake that she’s going to learn something that she wonʼt be able to forget. 

“My power is healing,” Max says slowly. “I can both heal and kill, we learned that at fourteen. That—that drifter wanted to—to hurt Isobel. I couldn’t allow it. I just couldn’t.” 

“That was _not_ my question,” Maria says, gaze shifting between the three of them and Liz, whoʼs looking weary and nervous. Maria has never had trouble reading her best friend, and now isn’t an exception. “Liz?” 

“Noah was an alien,” Liz finally says, dragging the words out as if they hurt. “He was a bad guy. He, uhm, we believe he killed Noah to recharge, since it seems they get strength from killing. And well, uhm, Max healed me when I almost died the second day I was back here and—” 

“You almost died?” Maria screeches. “Max healed you? You knew he could heal, you knew how my mom was struggling and you just remained silent?” There’s an anger she doesn’t want to feel screaming underneath her skin. 

“I can only heal physical wounds,” Max explains. “I wouldn’t be able to heal your mother even if I wanted to. It could be worse than what she’s going through now.” 

“But you knew,” Maria accuses. “You knew and didn’t tell me. What else?” 

“Max killed Noah,” Isobel keeps on. “He was abusing me. He was controlling my body, he was violent in my mind and heʼd been doing that for a decade and—” 

“I killed him, and used the power surge to heal Michael’s hand. Among other things.” There's a tinge of something that Maria reads as resignation and blame, but she can’t be sure. Now she understands why it was so difficult to actually read the three of them — they werenʼt human. 

But apparently she wasnʼt, either. 

Maria has to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat. There have been so many things to be discovered in the last few hours — finding out she isn’t like the rest hasnʼt come as a particularly striking surprise. She grew up thinking she was the only black girl in the world because her mother and herself were the only black people in Roswell. “What other things?” she finds herself asking against her common sense. He has just admitted to killing his brother-in-law who happened to be an evil alien, Maria doesn’t think it could get worse than that.

“It’s too much,” Liz speaks then, but instead of walking toward Max she’s stepping _aside_ , which is mostly confusing for Maria. “You’ve just learned about aliens. Telling you more would be harming. See what happened to Kyle and Alex—”

“ _Harming_? What do you mean Kyle and Alex? Do they _know_?” Maria’s about to lose it any moment now, the anger that she’s felt right underneath her skin trying to break free now that she sees her best friend trying to divert attention to other issues. “You’re telling me that your boyfriend is an alien, his sister is an alien, my—my _whatever_ it is between Michael and I—Michael’s also an alien, and they could have tried to cure my mother—”

“I already told you I can’t—”

“You don’t know,” she almost shrieks, finally losing her cool. She throws the cloth aside, one hot palm against the counter. “You’ve already said, multiple times, that you don’t know what you’re capable of because you _never_ wanted to know. You can’t know if she could be saved, and you won’t even _try_!”

“He brought Rosa back,” Michael blurts out, massaging his temple as though he’s chasing away a headache. “Now could you please stop screaming?”

“Wait, what?” Maria looks at him incredulously, ignoring the jabs from Liz who’s trying her best to make Michael shut up, and Max and Isobel who are attempting to cut him off as well. Maria can see Isobel’s fingers digging deeper into Michael’s shoulders, but he doesn’t stop speaking. Maria has to talk over his voice, “what do you mean, he brought Rosa back?”

“Among _other things_ ,” Michael says, air quotes in place as he gets off from under Isobel’s grasp. “Which is kinda ironic, you know, given that it was Noah who killed Rosa and—”

Maria slaps her hand on the counter and Michael stops talking for a second. When she looks around, she can see the fear in all the faces looking back at her, in each one of them except Michael’s. Michael looks like he’s done with the world, hunched forward like he’s drunk when she knows better — Michael looks like someone who’s finally realized they have nothing to lose. “Noah killed Rosa? It wasn’t an accident, then?” 

Michael seems to want to say something else, but Maria’s been listening to enough bullshit to last her a lifetime. Something sticks in the back of her mind, something nagging at her until she realizes what it is, and he thinks she’s going to be sick. “Isobel,” she begins, turning to the blonde with her hands still on top of the counter. “You said Noah’s been controlling you for a decade. Oh my—” 

Maria shakes her head when she realizes what she’s been missing and all the pieces fall into place. The utter terror in Isobel’s eyes tells her what she needs to know, enough to fill in the gaps of their feeble attempt at concealing what they knew and keeping her in the shadows. The vibes she’s getting talk to her about accidents that weren’t such and cover-ups that were too successful. Maria remembers the weird feeling she got when she first knew Rosa had been high while driving — she’d known Rosa had stopped doing drugs, she’d known it had been a lie all along.

Those three aliens now standing in front of her — a deputy, a socialité, a drunk — had spent the past ten years letting everyone think Rosa Ortecho had been to blame for something she had been a victim of. 

“Did you know it?” Maria asks Liz, forgetting for the moment being that they had assured that Rosa’s back to life — and that can’t be possible, as much alien they claim to be, that’s something only miracles can achieve — and she waits for Liz to tell her she’s mistaken. Her friend just looks ashamed and lowers her gaze, and Maria’s got all the answers she never wanted to have. “You _knew_. You knew they killed your sister, you knew they allowed your father to be hunted and attacked for something Rosa never did, and you still slept with him? You still forgave him?”

Maria tugs at the necklace, a rush of something she can’t control boiling in her veins. Briefly she wonders if it’s the alienness she might have in herself. She couldn’t care less. 

Right now, all Maria DeLuca has left is her mother and the knowledge that she’s been betrayed beyond comprehension. She’s hurting, and the last time she was this hurt, she broke a whole set of wine glasses.

“Get out,” she says through gritted teeth. “All of you. Get out. I never want to see you again.”

“Maria—”

“I said _get out_ ,” she repeats. “Never come back. You killed my best friend. You allowed her to be the town’s villain for ten years. Liz, you didn’t even fight for it. You just—you’ve betrayed her as much as you’ve betrayed your father, you know? I don’t care if you claim she’s alive again. I don’t want to see any of you _ever again_.”

With a final tug, she breaks the clasp of her necklace once again, and growls in anger and hurt. One by one, the others leave the bar. Michael sends her an apologetic glance before being ushered outside by Isobel, dragging his feet through the floors. When the door closes behind them, leaving her alone, she simply hits her forehead on the counter and cries.


End file.
